Um…wow? This movie absolutely rocked me. If you know me, you know I don’t like silence. I’m always listening to music or a podcast or some kind of noise at all times. But when I left the theater after seeing this movie, I walked home in silence. I couldn’t fathom any other thoughts entering my brain that didn’t relate to what I just experienced. I needed to process the emotional gut punch of All of Us Strangers. I felt fully consumed and moved by it. I got home and continued to not only think about the movie, but feel it in a deep way. All I wanted to do was come home from the theater and sob. I could cry now, days removed, just thinking about it again. But let me backup for a minute. 

All of Us Strangers is an unusual movie. It has a supernatural element while being entirely grounded and human. The movie follows Adam (played by Andrew Scott), a lonely man in his 40s living in London, who goes back to visit his childhood home and finds his parents there (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), despite the fact that they died in a car accident when Adam was 12. Yet another movie where everything is not what it seems. We get more imagery of mirrors and windows and reflections and really interesting transition scenes that play with lights and colors but also space and time. The whole film has a hauntingly beautiful quality where even the happier moments have an air of sinister undertones. It is hard to tell what is real and what is not. But, like my favorite Harry Potter quote says, when it comes to questions of reality, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Clearly, there is an element of mysticism within the plot. But the movie isn’t interested in the how or the why of what is going on here. Instead, both parties, Adam and his parents (who look the way they did just before they died), take this time they now have to catch up and connect in ways they never did before. To me, the movie feels almost like the actualization of an exercise in therapy. These people, this family, now get a chance to say everything they never had a chance to say to each other. They get a chance to say goodbye, to have some semblance of peace and closure. And while many of these conversations are painful in the moment, it is ultimately healing to no longer have it all left unsaid. 

That is the crux of the emotional weight of the movie: these conversations. There are so many specific moments and lines I could call out that are just shattering, but I don’t want to spoil too much if anyone is planning to see it. But, essentially, out of some brutally honest confessions and self-analysis by all the characters, Adam (and the audience) comes to realize that we are all just human and we’re all trying our best. Even our parents, who, especially when we are younger, we think are supposed to be perfect. They’re just doing the best they can in the only ways they know how. Sometimes you have to learn and grow and figure it out together. But the heartbreak here comes from the fact that this family never got that chance.

That emotional baggage made Adam who he is in the present. I think Harry, Adam’s love interest played by Paul Mescal, says it best early in the film. Adam tells Harry about his parents’ death and, when Harry says he’s sorry, Adam says, “It was a long time ago.” Harry then responds with, “Yeah I don’t think that matters.” That is the thesis of the film. Just because something happened in the past, however long ago, doesn’t mean we don’t still carry it with us today. Whether Adam really believes he’s over it or not, that proves to not be the case when talking with his parents just dredges up all these old wounds that never healed and still affect him to this day. Later, Adam tells Harry that it’s crazy how easily you can be transported back to exactly how you felt in a specific moment. His interactions with his parents bring out the hurt, scared child in him. All of us have triggers that, subconsciously or not, bring us right back to base levels of emotion from situations in our past. Never passing up an excuse to mention Taylor Swift, I’m reminded of when she once said, “no amount of friends at 25 / Will fill the empty seats / At the lunch tables of your past”. Our emotional scars make us who we are as people. Our personalities and habits and hopes and fears all grow from and around these moments. And when we get hit in these places, we don’t feel it as the people we are now, but as the people who received the initial wound. 

Just as in the story the movie is essentially therapy for Adam, watching it is like therapy for the audience. One review wrote, “The entire journey is not based in logic so much as a kind of emotional intuition, and as such, no two viewers will experience it the same way. What strikes some as manipulative will crack open others, as the film offers a kind of connection that’s all too rare, and maybe even impossible.” Basically, there is something for everyone here. Even though our life experiences are all wildly different, the movie gets at something fundamental that almost everyone can relate to in some way. I think anyone who has lost someone has thought at some point, “I wish they could see me now” in moments when you would want that person to be proud of you and what you have accomplished. But even more poignant, the movie shows the opposite of that. The moments where Adam thought, “I’m glad they can’t see me now because they would be disappointed.” Only to then be proven wrong by his parents who are just proud of him for waking up in the morning after everything he’s been through. The people who love you will always love you and be proud of even your smallest accomplishments. The wondering and the doubting is likely a universal feeling. But the acceptance Adam is able to get from his parents even after they are gone is the conclusion we all hope for for ourselves and therefore hits a particularly emotional and personal note.

The entire cast of this movie is four people and would quite literally not work without any of them. They are all kind of unbelievably good in this movie. Also, the British accents always go a long way for me personally. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are just heartbreaking as Adam’s parents. And, in the other storyline of the film, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal have incredible chemistry for one half of the couple (Mescal) being a straight man playing gay. Their relationship is so beautifully vulnerable and intimate. Genuinely this entire cast just knocks it out of the park.

This is by no means a perfect movie. The middle drags a little bit and the “what’s really going on here?” of it all starts to become distracting as the tension builds and builds. But, ultimately, I don’t know if it really matters if I say I liked it or didn’t like it. It moved me. It stuck with me. And that’s when you know a movie is truly powerful. When it makes you feel something that stays with you long after you leave the theater. The ending leaves you wanting more. Hurting for more resolution. But, as Adam’s mother tells him, it will never be enough. There will never be enough time, enough closure, enough anything to heal all your pain. That’s just how life works. You have to take the blows the best you can and keep living. I thought this film was astonishing but definitely proceed with caution watching it. It’s a really emotional ordeal that will hit too close to home for almost anyone. I will be mentally and emotionally recovering from this one for a long while but I’m happy to have experienced it.

2024 Count: 1 season, 3 movies