All of Us Strangers (2023)

directed by Andrew Haigh

Daniel Peña Moscoso

“Do you think any of this is real?”

“Does it feel real?”

“Yes.”

“Then there you go.”

—

I have a playlist on my phone called “ghosts are a metaphor.”

It was born at 2 am after I had just finished watching Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House for the fourth or fifth time. The qualifications for making it onto the playlist are very flexible. Some are extremely on the nose (“Two Ghosts” by Harry Styles, “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot, “Watching You Without Me” by Kate Bush), and some are a bit of a stretch (“The Grants” by Lana Del Rey, “Letter To An Old Poet” by boygenius, “coney island” by Taylor Swift).

If it has the word “ghost” or even conveys the feeling of the word “ghost,” it’s on the playlist.

The idea of spirits as a metaphorical device in any kind of art has always been fascinating to me, and to countless artists throughout history. Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare (1781) depicts a grotesque creature sitting on a woman’s chest in the dark. Hamlet’s recently-murdered father appears to him as a spirit in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The Haunting of Hill House, while a more literal example, uses the spirits to spin a heart-wrenching story of grief, loss, and regret. The ghosts haunting these characters are quite literal, but often are stand-ins for a deep truth about the character. That might be why All Of Us Strangers haunts me so much.

All I knew about All of Us Strangers when I first heard of it was that it was gay, and that was enough to get me in the seat. I set six alarms before 9 am and waited 40 minutes in a digital queue to get tickets to the West Coast premiere at Beyond Fest. When the day finally came for the screening, my boyfriend and I arrived precisely on time. We quickly learned this meant we were an hour late, as the line already wrapped around the side of the theater. We sat in the first few rows on the left side, and I left the Aero Theater with tears in my eyes and a crick in my neck.

All Of Us Strangers stars Andrew Scott as the recluse and lonely queer screenwriter Adam. Adam lives alone in a high rise that’s seemingly empty, except for Paul Mescal’s Harry, whom he slowly develops a relationship with. Jamie Bell and Claire Foy star as Adam’s parents who passed away in a tragic accident and have mysteriously reappeared in his life (ghosts!).

As soon as we left the screening, my boyfriend and I got into an argument about the movie.

“They were not ghosts,” he said.

“Yes, they were. They literally asked him how they died. They were ghosts.”

“They were physical manifestations of his loneliness; he made them up because he was so lonely.”

“I agree with you, but why can’t they be ghosts? In the context of the story, they were ghosts! As a metaphor!”

We talked in circles until we got our vegan nachos, and eventually we decided that we each had our own interpretation, and that we were gonna have a lovely night not discussing the existence of the afterlife in a British fantasy romance film. 

*

Although, in my opinion, the film ends on an optimistic note, it does not shy away from shattering your heart into a million little pieces. There are quite a few moments in All of Us Strangers that do that.

For starters, on Adam’s initial visit to his childhood home, after reconnecting with his (dead) parents, they invite him to come back whenever he needs.

“Come back soon. One of us will be in.”

On the first of these trips, his mother is home. She’s made him some tea and flapjacks, and she wants to catch up. She asks him if he has a girlfriend.

The first time I saw this scene, I felt a pang in my stomach. The question I dreaded the most growing up. I watched as Adam squirmed in his seat as he finally told his mother that he’s gay. His mom continues to pry, almost becoming irritated with him. Adam gets defensive, and I just sat in my seat watching what had been one of my worst fears growing up.

It was something I replayed every single day. In the morning, I’d eat my breakfast and wonder what would happen if I just blurted it out. I’d sit in class fantasizing about the big dramatic speech I would give, probably at the dinner table or during a holiday (for theatrical purposes). I’d lie in bed at night, anxiously awake, playing out all the ways it could go devastatingly wrong.

By the time I saw the film, I had just recently come out to my parents, and I found the scene poignantly truthful. This moment I had fantasized about for years, dreaming up endless interchangeable backdrops and “ruthless” mic-drop lines I could scream out, ended up being beautifully mundane. Two people sitting at a table.

“I suppose I never did know what was going on in your odd little head. You were always running away. Do you remember?”

Claire Foy’s incredible performance in the film did not make this moment hurt any less. Throughout my teen years I felt myself running away: from questions about girlfriends, to going to college in a different city. Adam learned, as did I, that you cannot run away from yourself, no matter how hard you try. 

Later on in the film, Adam has a similar moment with his father in the living room. His father asks him if he was bullied in school. Adam tells him he was. Adam then recounts the certain things his father would tell him not to do, like “crossing his legs like a woman.” Adam’s father doesn’t remember it, but Adam certainly does. Of course he does. Sometimes, so do I.

“I’m sorry I never came into your room when I heard you crying.”

I felt that same feeling in my stomach. Watching Adam break down as his father apologizes is a beautiful moment that I think will be very healing for a lot of people. Not all queer people get an apology, and this scene is a brief catharsis to that reality.

There is, of course, another important central relationship to Adam in the film, and that is the love story between him and Harry. When we first meet Harry, he is drunkenly flirting with Adam, and he seems to be at quite a low point.

“There’s vampires at my door.”

It seems like a hauntingly bizarre thing to say, but it bookends the ending quite beautifully. Harry is paraphrasing the opening lines from the 1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood song “The Power of Love.”

I’ll protect you from the hooded claw / Keep the vampires from your door.

The song plays at key moments throughout the film; the moment Harry meets Adam, and the final moments of the film. 

I will admit, I did miss this connection on my first watch, even though it was blatantly obvious and there are multiple references (I was busy trying to wipe my tears away before the credits rolled and the lights went up). All of Us Strangers highlights a song by an unapologetically gay British pop band from the ‘80s, and it could not be a more perfect choice. (The film is very intentional about its music choices, but we’re here to talk about ghosts and metaphors, so I’ll spare you the details. The context of the song is also important, but this article has director Andrew Haigh breaking it down in his own words).

Adam and Harry’s evolving relationship is woven throughout the film, and what touched me most was the depiction of the mundane moments in their relationship. Lying in bed, cooking breakfast. Watching the movie, it dawned on me that it wasn’t something I had seen on screen often in a queer relationship. I loved it.

“Are the two of you in love?”

Adam’s mom asks him about Harry. Still to this day, whenever I hear my family mention my boyfriend, it surprises me. I am living in the reality that I used to daydream about. It is the sort of casual acceptance that I had convinced myself wouldn’t be the case for me. I am so happy I was wrong.

Once Adam’s parents realize their son is happy, it’s time for them to go.

“It’s not been anywhere near close to long enough.”

“How could it ever be?”

They have their final meal inside an American themed diner. Adam’s parents ask about their death. Adam lies and tells them it was quick. Their goodbye is brief but beautiful, and if you haven’t seen the film yet, I urge you to watch it for this scene alone (as I’m about to spoil the ending).

Adam heads back to the apartment, and there’s one final blow.

Harry has been dead this whole time (ghost!). 

On my first watch, this twist angered me. It felt so unfair to watch this lonely man heal and grow, only to have the optimistic future swept out from under him. I was mad! And yet, on my rewatches, I understood. Harry was the ghost of Adam’s loneliness, a manifestation of the life he had avoided for so long, but finally understood that he deserved. It’s the journey that so many queer people go through (maybe not the ghost part). Acceptance of every part of yourself, trauma and all, and the belief that you do deserve to be happy, and you get to be! I finally understand that myself.

*

All of Us Strangers is not an easy watch by any means. But it is a beautiful one.

I have always believed that queer people deserve to see their stories told in every medium and every genre. From the tragic ghost love story at the center of the miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor, to the genre-bending sapphic thriller Love Lies Bleeding, the recent inclusion of queer storylines at the center of wildly different kinds of films is the best possible representation in my eyes, and Andrew Haigh added his star to the sky with All of Us Strangers.

In All of Us Strangers, ghosts are regret. Ghosts are words you didn’t get the chance to say, and doors you should’ve left open. Ghosts are memories of the people you love, for better or for worse. Ghosts are loneliness. They’re the mournful fantasy of a life you could’ve had, the perfect illusion of endless “what-ifs.” Ghosts are a wish.

I, personally, am going to continue to see this as a ghost story.

Yes, Adam’s loneliness has conjured up the dream of his dead parents being home. He may also be fantasizing about a relationship with that cute (dead) guy a few floors up that he should’ve let in. But Haigh allows us the indulgence of living that healing fantasy with him. Ghosts or not, the journey that Adam goes on is very real, and we are right on board with him.

Sometimes the scope of the universe overwhelms me. Sometimes, at night, I still am that little boy lying awake in bed filled with unanswerable questions and playing out painful scenarios that will never actually happen. Maybe Andrew Haigh feels the same way, because his film offers me a very simple answer.

Life is brief, life is beautiful, and the thing we all have in common is our humanity. Yes, we make mistakes. But at the very end, the only thing that will have mattered is the people we loved and how we loved them. We are quite powerless in the grand scheme of things, and All of Us Strangers offers a peaceful answer to the chaos. The ghosts of what could’ve been will always be floating in the shadows, down the hall, just out of sight.  It doesn’t matter. All we can really do is love the people we hold close, and keep the vampires from their door.

Daniel Peña Moscoso is a writer and video editor from San Diego. He is a co-host of the besties! podcast and co-creator of Our Hollywood. He also has a 323 day streak on Duolingo (French, in case you were wondering). Find him at danielpena.carrd.co.