REVIEW: All of Us Strangers [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 105 minutes
Release Date: December 22nd, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Searchlight Pictures
Director(s): Andrew Haigh
Writer(s): Andrew Haigh / Taichi Yamada (novel Strangers)

I suppose we don’t get to decide when it ends.

If watching Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers isn’t enough to leave you speechless, try reading the synopsis of the novel by Taichi Yamada that he adapted. My first reaction was to laugh because it’s such a stark departure in tone and genre. But then I started to think about it more. I started to see the correlations between what the couple is doing to Yamada’s protagonist and what they’re doing to Haigh’s counterpart. Both “take” something. The difference—beyond morphing the physical into the emotional—is that Haigh’s are also giving something back.

Adam (Andrew Scott) needs it too. Not just because his screenwriter is mired in a bout of writer’s block while dealing with the nuisances of living in an almost empty, brand new apartment complex in London. But because he’s never been able to shake the loneliness that has consumed him since his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) died thirty years ago in a car crash. We can see the sadness in his eyes. And then there’s the fear and embarrassment that replace it when Harry (Paul Mescal) knocks on his door. Adam knows isolation. He’s comfortable with its pain. To dare to love and risk losing it again? There’s nothing scarier.

These heavy emotions mix with nostalgia to put him on a train back to his childhood home. The point is to confront the memories. To reconcile who he was with who he is and find a pathway forward. What he discovers instead is an opportunity to drift backwards—to loosen his grip on closure by distracting himself from the resurfacing grief via an impossible fantasy that will only leave him hurting more. Because who should greet him at the door but his Mum and Dad, neither having aged a day since their fateful crash. They know they’re dead and they know Adam is their son. They can’t wait to find out about the man he’s become.

The film hinges entirely on Scott’s performance as a result. Not just with his parents and the potential that arrives from telling them everything he couldn’t growing up (including that he’s gay), but also with the blossoming romance opposite Harry. What begins with awkward shyness gradually opens with a newfound confidence and desire for exploration. It’s as though Adam has shed decades of baggage from his shoulders through the regular visits he shares with his parents. There’s increased clarity, excitement, and energy that he pours into his work and relationship. He’s somehow become whole. But at what cost?

If this was Yamada’s original, Adam would be paying with his soul. Haigh takes a different route. He, admittedly, moves more towards the metaphysical rather than the supernatural. Because the longer Adam stays with his parents, the harder it becomes to reclaim the life he has built. Their presence becomes a crutch now as much as their absence did then. It pushes him outside of his comfort zone in both good ways and bad since the closure he needs has less to do with having them around then it does with having the chance to willingly let them go. It’s a devastating revelation made more so by three absolutely devastating performances from Scott, Bell, and Foy.

And just as he must accept the truth of what has happened to them, so too must he accept his own truth and the choices he’s made. Between his parents and Harry, he’s finally escaped a self-inflected exile of body and mind—an evolution that comes with its own fresh dangers. The hope then is that these experiences have better prepared him for new tragedies. That hindsight and recognition have allowed him to understand he doesn’t have to feel guilty for surviving. Yes, it’s sad. Yes, he’s sorry he couldn’t save them. But it doesn’t mean he’s not worthy of living just because they weren’t given the chance.

It all leads to a heartbreaking finale that’s less a shock because you weren’t expecting it than it is for knowing and dreading that it was always coming. Haigh beautifully handles the narrative progressions to ensure he doesn’t have to jump through hoops distracting us from a truth hidden in plain sight. He knows how to use his script to prevent us from asking questions, but it never feels manipulative. We are simply too caught up in the endorphin release to consider what else is going on until Adam himself is ready. It doesn’t make it any less crushing, but it does provide hope. Hope that Adam can embrace that which he had and not simply lament that which he’s lost.