Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers is a story about a haunted man, which becomes a film about a (potentially more literal) haunting. The film’s main preoccupation is with conversations which never happen. Adam (Andrew Scott), an aspiring screenwriter, is using the script format to try and crack into his inner visions of his deceased parents. Hypothetical conversations play out on screen, where Adam divulges to his parents things he never had the chance to while they were alive. His mum and dad (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) appear younger than Adam; they are the last version of them he can remember, as they died in a car crash when he was still a boy.

These dialogues are the heart of the film, despite a great performance by Paul Mescal that props up the film’s other half: a budding romance between two lonely men who are living in an almost entirely empty high rise. As the film progresses, the conversations become more emotionally intense, as Adam imagines how his parents would have responded to him coming out. These scenes are charged and cathartic in a way that is quiet but also occasionally revelatory. One or two of these scenes transcend the issues I faced with this film (see below), as do the first few scenes of Scott and Mescal’s meet cute.

Scott’s performance is mainly pensive and stoic, but he makes it so his character can’t help but betray just enough behind the eyes and in the brow. And Haigh is smart enough to know what he’s got to work with, lingering shots on the actor for just the right length of time as to make the viewer curious.

Unfortunately, the film starts spinning its wheels midway through a bad ketamine high, where the two plotlines merge and Scott’s performance becomes more performative. The film only has so much to say about human longing and loneliness before it starts feeling repetitive. And the moment when the imagined conversations start feeling too real for Adam tips the film into psychological territory that I don’t think the film needs to dwell in to justify its project. Further, and without spoiling too much, it ends in a tragic manner that simply doesn’t seem fitting. The film is adapted from Taichi Yamada’s Strangers, loosely enough that these minor narrative issues do not stem entirely from the source material.

Still, Haigh shoots it all with gorgeous warmth and deliberation (Jamie Ramsay DPs). And the performances carry it all through to the end in spite of the narrative flaws.

All of Us Strangers: B

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As always, thanks for reading!

—Alex Brannan (Twitter, Letterboxd, Facebook)