See You Yesterday Review (Film, 2019)

Content warning: racial violence, violence against children

Science fiction can go in so many different ways. It can be epic space opera, terrifying horror brought on by humanity’s hubris in the search for discovery, or quiet subtle stories tackling real human problems with things slightly outside our universe. See You Yesterday is that third kind of sci-fi and writer/director Stefon Bristol and writer Fredrica Bailey do not take the easy way out.

See You Yesterday is a response to police brutality against people of color in America. It’s a time travel adventure story about trying to right society’s wrongs no matter what the cost. It’s a tribute to the optimism of youth and a critique of how often society pushes the next generation to solve problems they had no hand in creating. It’s inherently a political text that never preaches.

C.J. and Sebastian are gifted teenagers attending a competitive STEM-driven magnet school in Brooklyn. They have invented a working time machine that can send someone back in time 24 hours for a few minutes at a time. Their goal is to use it to win a science fair that offers scholarship money to help them go to their dream colleges. However, a prank C.J. plays when traveling to the past has terrible implications in the future, resulting in a deadly police shooting that changes everything. C.J. decides that she has to change the past, rebuilding the time machines again and again as the past slips beyond her reach to save the lives of the people she loves.

See You Yesterday is part of a great trend in American science fiction. Political topics have always been part of the genre. However, even the smaller sci-fi stories for decades were massive in scope and focus. More and more sci-fi is taking a comparatively simple story that allows room for gigantic ideas to resonate throughout the plot. These smaller budget films are defining innovation with a smart use of resources and a focus on intelligent storytelling.

The central pull of See You Yesterday is something I’m privileged not to worry about on a daily basis. I’m a white man in America with passing privilege. If I get pulled over by the cops, I’m more likely to be given a chance to reason my way out of trouble than a person of color. It’s impossible to escape the media coverage of police brutality. It disproportionately effecting people of color, specifically black people, in America and it feels like nothing we do to stop it.

See You Yesterday isn’t the only film to address this in 2019 because the fear and anxiety created by the disproportionate use of force in the increasingly militarized police forces in America is very real. However, the use of science fiction really opens up an important social and political discussion in brilliant ways. It inherently creates a sense of hope that there can be a solution to this crisis.

This film feels honest at its core. It’s actually quite remarkable that Stefon Bristol takes something as fantastical as time travel and grounds it in reality. Even before tragedy strikes, forever changing an entire community, the world feels real.

Everything is justified by the opening stretch of the narrative. C.J. is struggling to keep her temper in check. She wants to do so much more in her life and is pressured by her family to succeed. She also knows how to stand up for herself and does not back down from a fight. She’s headstrong and feels invincible. Even when facing the police earlier in the story, she refuses to back down if it means giving up on something she believes is right. Her prank that changes the course of the future is even built in that same sense of justice. And knowing her prank is the reason why tragedy strikes pushes her to have to be the one to fix everything with or without the help of her friends.

See You Yesterday does so much with a comparatively small amount of resources for the genre. The time travel machines are two backpacks with cables attached to supplies from the home improvement store. The time travel is some really beautiful green screen work with expressive movement from the actors. The rest is reality. The characters feel real. The community feels real. The narrative feels real.

Perhaps the greatest compliment you can give to science fiction is saying the story would work just as well if there were no science fiction elements at all. The world and characters draw you in, the sci-fi pushes the narrative in unexpected ways, and the whole film rings true.

See You Yesterday is currently streaming on Netflix.