ALL OF US STRANGERS - Mark Reviews Movies

All of Us Strangers, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 21, 2023

The core of All of Us Strangers gets at an emotional truth of universal longing: if only we could speak to a deceased loved one again. That's what happens to Adam (Andrew Scott), the sad and lonely protagonist of writer/director Andrew Haigh's film, as he returns to his childhood neighborhood, only to find a young couple who look, sound, and act exactly like his parents. They died when Adam was just a boy, and these two look, sound, and act that way, because they are his parents, brought back to life or some reasonable facsimile of it by some inexplicable means.

It's a lovely and mournful conceit, taken from a 1987 novel—simply called Strangers—by Taichi Yamada. What makes this admittedly familiar idea compelling is that Haigh doesn't waste time with some explanation and only falters, perhaps, in allowing the mystery of Adam's ability to see and speak to the dead overtake the film's third act.

Until that point, though, the story is primarily about this man and his parents talking about everything they missed out on after death, everything they didn't notice while they were alive, and everything he wishes he could have told them. It cuts straight to and deeply into the heart.

There's another subplot here, too, which is nearly as considered and tender, having to do with Adam taking the pain of and potential reconciliation with his parents' death into a new romantic relationship. It's fine enough, mainly because the other man in that bond is also one who's alone and afraid and melancholy about some unspoken thing. If the blending of the two stories here only makes clear thematic and emotional sense by the end, the strength of the son-parent side of the narrative is so overwhelming that it pretty much carries the entirety of the film.

It's all seen from Adam's perspective, which is, of course, an unreliable one. For one thing, he's a screenwriter, suffering from a case of writer's block until he makes his first trip to his hometown and finds a subject about which to write. Currently residing in London, Adam is one of only two occupants of a newly constructed apartment building, which is so eerily absent of sound and signs of life that it might as well as be a ghost, too. It certainly has the look and atmosphere of a kind of urban purgatory, and whether or not Haigh takes that metaphor to its narratively logical end is a bit of a surprise—although not in the way this cryptic explanation of Adam and his housing probably suggests.

Anyway, Adam lives alone, can't do the one thing he's supposed to do, and is interrupted in his procrastination one night by a test of the building's fire alarm. Outside, he spots a light on in another unit, and the person in that apartment notices him.

He's Harry (Paul Mescal), who shows up at his door with a bottle of booze and wonders if his only neighbor would like to help him finish it. Adam turns down the offer, but over the course of the rest of the story, the two men regularly meet up, find they have a good amount in common, and start a romance that's as much about that emotional connection as the physical one that accompanies it.

In a way, it's the payoff to the scenes with the parents, since so much of Adam's life has been spent questioning why they died in a car accident, wondering what they would think of him now, and being stuck in uncertainty. We know all of this, because Harry serves as Adam's sounding board and the utter, transparent vulnerability of Scott's performance. The character doesn't have to say much—and, often, he doesn't—for us to understand the depth of anguish and self-doubt that define Adam. It's right there, boldly, on Scott's face at every moment and with intricate variations in each of those moments.

They are moments of beautiful honesty at times, especially after Adam does meet his parents after decades of absence. Dad (Jamie Bell) spots him in a shop in the old neighborhood and, despite the long years changing his son from a boy to a man, recognizes him instantly. Dad brings Adam home to Mum (Claire Foy), who also sees her little boy in this adult's eyes. They all just stare at each other and smile and laugh in disbelief, because this can't and shouldn't happen.

Haigh simply allows it to, without any rationale except that one that exists in the far reaches of the soul and the pit of the stomach: Wouldn't it be nice? Adam keeps visiting. He tells Mum and Dad that he's a writer, and didn't they always suspect their clever boy would do something with that sensitive, thoughtful mind of his?

He explains to his mother why he doesn't have a wife or a girlfriend, and her reaction, as a parent from another time when such matters simply weren't spoken of, is the conversation he never had the chance to dread, except in his imagination. Dad is a bit more understanding, although their talk about how Adam's not-so-old man would hear his son crying and not say or do anything about it is equally hopeful and heartbreaking. That conversation is happening now, but in another way, it never happened—and, depending what the truth of this scenario, isn't even real now.

Part of the reason this story works so well and on such an emotionally potent level is because such inherent contradictions within the mystery of these seemingly resurrected characters. All of Us Strangers might never fully explain the cause of or the reality of what's happening here, but it certainly loses some of that raw power by making that question so much the focus of the third act. Up until then, though, the film's emotional impact is raw and, in many instances, quite powerful.

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