Review | All of Us Strangers movie review: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal star in Andrew Haigh’s heart-shattering drama on Disney+
- All of Us Strangers dares to explore love and loneliness at their most raw, a film that becomes an increasingly devastating experience in the final act
- Mescal displays a beguiling combination of warmth and sadness, but really this is Scott’s film – he delivers a commanding, emotionally rich performance
4.5/5 stars
A poignant film about parents and partners, Andrew Haigh’s All of us Strangers is the most accomplished work of his career so far.
The British director behind Weekend and 45 Years has already proved himself competent in showing the foibles of human relationships, but this London-set drama of isolation is a huge step upwards. Like the high-rise apartment block that Andrew Scott’s character exists in, this film towers over most others this year.
Scott plays Adam, a television screenwriter who lives alone in a newly occupied block. The only other tenant is Harry (Paul Mescal), who makes his presence known one night when he turns up at his door, suggesting they get a drink.
Adam resists, but it’s not long before they fall into each other’s arms. Both single and gay, they are alone and troubled in different ways – in Adam’s case, he is haunted by the death of his parents when he was a child.
It’s here where Haigh takes the film’s greatest risk, as Adam is compelled to revisit the suburban home where he grew up. And it’s here where he encounters his parents, ghosts who are very much as he remembers them from the 1980s.
