There’s probably a brilliant movie to be lensed using a stationary camera affixed on one single room of a house and chronicling what happens in that space on earth from prehistoric to pandemic times. Director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis hasn’t landed on the brilliant part of his cinematic science project. His Here (D+) is a filmed carousel of progress with some occasionally lovely compositions but an absolutely inert set of artificial storylines. It has the effect of an old vacation slide show presented by your most cringe-worthy relative. The nostalgic object lessons, told out of order in a taxonomy of themes, include vignettes of Native American rituals, Benjamin Franklin’s relatives, a crackpot inventor, a greatest generation couple, boomers delighting and struggling with modern family life (Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in various dreadful levels of de-aging effects) and the African-American family of the here and now. The only surprises along the journey are the effective use of pictures-in-picture delineated by rule lines, a late-breaking mirror effect and clever dissolves. Sometimes windows gracefully overlapping with the wilderness of bygone times or a novel show running on the family TV provide a welcome distraction from the human doldrums. The punishing pageant of various still lives accompanied by soaring Alan Silvestri music are comprised of such basic tropes that any moments of genuine drama are robbed of their gravitas. Latter stage Zemeckis films have been preoccupied with visual effects to the detriment of story, and this particular film finds little focus except for that omniscient camera in the same damn place the whole time. The film manages to be maddening and melodramatic when it was meant to be meaningful.