‘All of Us Strangers’ movie review: Andrew Haigh’s sublime ghost story romance
One wouldn’t take the masterful British filmmaker Andrew Haigh as a horror director, yet his most recent cinematic venture, All of Us Strangers, is his second ghost story in under a decade. His first, 2015’s 45 Years, was a little more metaphysical, exploring the ghosts of one’s past who return to taunt you, whilst his latest tale is more visceral, a complete haunting that speaks to the spectres that fester in the loneliest parts of the human soul.
Set in two vastly contrasting locations, the drama of Haigh’s extraordinary fantasy is split between a vast London highrise, where the sound of solitude is filled with the empty bang of the clunky lift shaft and an old suburban family home that shimmers with life. The former is a cold industrial complex occupied only by the troubled screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott), who is trying to pen a story about his youth, and Harry (Paul Mescal), a charming rogue whose bedroom light catches Adam’s eye at night.
As the pair form a close relationship, Adam ventures to his family home to curiously gather notes about the home he shared with his parents before their untimely demise when he was just 12 years old. Walking on a journey through the streets of his past, he comes across his father’s ghost, who leads him home, where his mother eagerly awaits, prompting a coming-of-age tale that occurs decades after adolescence.
A perfect adaptation of an imperfect 1987 novel by Taichi Yamada, All of Us Strangers ditches trying to legitimise the supernatural elements of its conceit to instead focus on the central relationship between the two male protagonists. Having previously shown his cinematic proficiency in exploring the tenderness of human connection in 2011’s Weekend and 2015’s 45 Years, Haigh once again fuses a beautiful on-screen romance that flourishes thanks to remarkable turns from Mescal and Scott.
Crafting unique characters that creak with fragility, both lead performances carry the earnest nature of Haigh’s screenplay, with their relationship and innate desire for human connection resonating through the screen. Such quiet, delicate characters are not easy to bring to vibrant cinematic life, yet Mescal, Scott, and supporting stars Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, as the ghostly mother and father, pull off the remarkable feat.
Much like the horror material that the story tentatively pulls from, Haigh’s film, too, has a shroud of dread, exploring the existential terror of one’s own mortality and place in an ever-more isolated universe. Such is compared in the film to a knot of complex emotions in Adam’s chest that can only be untied through human connection, communication and the power of love, underlined by the regular sound of the song of the same name by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
Such may all sound a little saccharine, but Haigh delicately balances each ingredient, playing off the ghostly apparitions as if they were physical facts rather than remarkable fantasy feats. It all creates a moody, nostalgic piece of storytelling that glows with cinematic vigour, punctuated by a final sequence that tosses the audience into the stratosphere, weightless in a crescendo of transcendent emotion.
