Stream It Or Skip It: ‘All of Us Strangers’ on Hulu, a Powerful and Profound Metaphysical Tearjerker

Perhaps no film in recent memory will leave you emotionally exploded into splinters like All of Us Strangers (now streaming on Hulu, as well as VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) does. Director/writer Andrew Haigh (45 Days) adapted Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers into this strange-but-beautiful drama, starring Andrew Scott as a writer who somehow jaunts through memory or space-time or something less explicable to visit his long-dead parents. Paul Mescal co-stars, appearing in his second gutpunch of the last year or so, after netting an Oscar nom for 2022’s Aftersun, and before he changes course to anchor the upcoming Gladiator 2. Get your hankies ready for this one, though, because the tears will come, and every damn last one of them will be painfully sincere.

ALL OF US STRANGERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: EXT. SUBURBAN HOUSE 1987. Adam (Scott) finally types this after an undetermined length of time. It comes after – no, amidst, definitely amidst a bout of depression-fueled writer’s block. What it comes after is a day of hovering over the keyboard while staring hopelessly at a blank screen, an evening of sedentary snacking on the couch and an irritating fire alarm that drives him down to the street, where he looks up to see only one other apartment occupied in his entire building. (Why so empty? It’s just the first of many mysteries about Adam’s reality.) He returns to his flat and a moment later, Harry (Mescal) knocks on the door. He’s drunk. He chats up Adam a bit, asks to come in. But Adam gently says sorry, no, and they retreat to their respective residences.

Adam rifles through a box of artifacts, and comes across a photo of the home he lived in as a child. He takes the train out of London. Walks into a neighborhood. Holds up the photo to match the house. A boy looks out the window and their eyes meet and neither acknowledges the other with a wave or a nod or a smile, nothing. Adam knocks on the door and is greeted by his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy). They haven’t seen Adam in a long time. So long, they don’t know he’s a writer – TV and movie scripts. Oddly, they appear to be the same age as Adam. No, he’s older. By a few years or so, maybe. They catch up a little and Adam goes home.

The writer’s block seems to have loosened its grip on Adam now. He types some. He looks out the window with binoculars and spots Harry, who waves, comes up the flat, and comes in for a drink. No, not a drink, but a bit of weed in the vape pen. They talk, and determine they’re both queer. Well, “queer” was a pejorative for Adam for a long time. He prefers “gay.” That’s a generational thing. They kiss, have sex, share a little about themselves. Adam says his parents died in a car accident when he was 11, but he doesn’t say anything about visiting their ghosts, who appear to be trapped in a metaphysical conundrum. “I’m sorry,” Harry says empathetically. “It was a long time ago,” Adam replies. “I don’t think that matters,” Harry says.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: All of Us Strangers and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story are like sibling films of a sort. They’ll also bankrupt the Kleenex factory.

Performance Worth Watching: Scott – perhaps best known as The Hot Priest on Fleabag – is extraordinary in a role requiring close-up contemplation and emotional vulnerability. Given the power, I’d nudge a couple best actor Oscar nominees out of contention so he could get deserving recognition.

Memorable Dialogue: Harry breaks our goddamn hearts: “I know how easy it can be to stop caring for yourself,” he tells Adam during a devastatingly tender moment.  

Sex and Skin: A couple of fairly intense, graphic sex scenes.

Our Take: The “rules” of reality in All of Us Strangers seem governed by intuition. I suspect it’s Occam’s Razor simple, but pondering the hows and whys of Adam’s esoteric excursions is a fool’s errand, like trying to fit a feeling into a Tupperware container. And although it’s easy to be distracted by an all-too-human need to intellectually define what’s happening here, it’s also wholly beside the point. A psychologist might dig up a cleaner interpretation of Adam’s experiences, but the rest of us should be content with being immersed in a womblike narrative that reflects the emotional isolation of a man who will never get over the sudden and brutal loss of his parents (note: no one would; closure is a myth), and also must wrestle with the outsiderism that gay people experience in a society that, in the words of the screenplay, has at least “gotten better” since the very 1987 viewpoints expressed by Adam’s parents, but still renders challenging some components of queer existence. 

So there are layers to this story, all psychological and ethereal, and Haigh carefully sidesteps the maudlin in lieu of the mysterious. Watching the film is akin to submerging yourself in a bath with only your eyes and nose breaking the surface, so you can block out the noise of being tragically human and imagine a reality where deep, unquenchable yearnings can be fulfilled. The film veers from chilly and harsh to psychedelic and surreal, reflections of Adam’s depression. When he finds moments of connection with Harry – they’re two souls who perhaps need it more than most – warmth emerges like the heat kicking on after a lengthy power outage.

The less said about All of Us Strangers the better, it seems, although it’s not about its modest revelations. Haigh uses a fascinating narrative mechanism to cut through the fog of self-examination and loneliness to make a deceptively simple statement about the eternal nature of love. The idea is best illustrated in a pair of scenes in which Adam meets with one parent, and then the other, to discuss his sexuality: One is challenging and the other plaintive, and both are heartbreaking. They address regret, curiosity, judgment; the difficulties of being a parent and being a child; the ways in which the world around us has changed and stayed the same. I walked away thinking about how catharsis in any form is a powerful force, and how creativity – one senses the film is a deliberation on Haigh’s own experiences, to a degree; he filmed some of it in his family home – can be the fuel for breaking out of debilitating stasis. It’s about holding on, and it’s about letting go.

Our Call: All of Us Strangers is a remarkably profound film, and one that’ll cling to you tightly for days. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.