All Of Us Strangers has made viewers cry since its release in January and many believe it was overlooked in this year’s awards season.
The emotional drama starring Andrew Scott and Pablo Mescal unites a beautiful romance with deep pain, as Andrew’s character, Adam, remains deeply affected by the death of his parents (Claire Foy and Jaime Bell).
Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, screenwriter Adam struggles to move on with his life while still troubled by memories of the past before he meets his mysterious neighbor Harry (Mescal).
As the film blurs the line between life and death, it becomes difficult to figure out what is real and what is a creation of Adam’s mind.
Here we take a deep dive into All Of Us Strangers as we explain the twists and turns of the gripping plot.
The twists and turns of All Of Us Strangers REVEALED: From visiting ghosts to a blurry night who and what is real in the emotional drama starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal
Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 Strangers, screenwriter Adam struggles to move on with his life while still troubled by memories of the past before he meets his mysterious neighbor Harry (Mescal).
The film begins as we meet Adam living a life of loneliness in his abandoned house. High-rise urban apartment in London.
Watching Frankie Goes To Hollywood performing The Power Of Love on his television, a motif that continues to appear throughout the film, Adam knocks on the door when he meets his neighbor Harry.
When Harry arrives drunk holding a bottle of whiskey, he quotes lyrics from the hit Frankie Goes To Hollywood and whispers, “I’ll protect you from the hooded claw / Keep the vampires away from your door.”
After asking Adam if he can spend the night with him, Adam refuses, but then meets Harry in the elevator and the pair begin a passionate relationship.
As Adam learns to love someone and let them in, he is deeply affected by the death of his parents after they both died in a car accident when he was 11 years old.
Throughout the film, Andrew continues to visit his parents in his childhood home, which is just as he remembered them in the 1980s.
Her relationship with Harry develops, interspersed with these imaginary visits home, until tragedy strikes and Adam finds his lover’s body.
After saying goodbye to his parents for the last time in a deeply emotional interaction, Adam appears ready to move on from his grief and start a life with Harry.
The film depicts a romance between Harry and Adam. However, Harry dies the same night he meets Adam, as is discovered later in the film.
Throughout the film, Andrew continues to visit his parents in his childhood home, which is just as he remembered them in the 1980s (pictured Claire Foy, who plays his mother).
However, he returns to Harry’s apartment to discover his body next to the same bottle of whiskey he was carrying when he showed up at Adam’s door that first night.
As Adam stares in shock at Harry’s body, the door opens again and Harry walks in wearing the same pink sweater from that first night and asks, “I’m there, right?”
When he cries in Adam’s arms, it becomes clear: Harry has been dead the entire movie after dying the night Adam refused to spend the night with him.
However, once you realize it, the clues throughout the movie start to present themselves.
First, the night they meet, Harry is holding the same Japanese whiskey they found him in when he dies and wearing the same tattered pink sweater.
The couple are also the only two occupants of the building, and Harry mentions that the windows have been locked to prevent people from jumping out.
Adam then visits his parents and we learn for the first time that he can see dead people and interact with them in an incredibly realistic way.
After her visit she meets Harry in the elevator and their relationship begins. Growing closer throughout the film, the couple spends a blurry night and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what is real.
This is where things get pretty confusing, as after Adam takes a large dose of ketamine it’s unclear what is reality and what is part of his drug-fueled trip.
As the lights flash and the music plays, Harry disappears and Adam’s vision distorts as he struggles to distinguish whether Harry is really there or not.
On the subway home, Harry keeps appearing and disappearing as it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a grasp of reality.
Adam visits his parents and we learn for the first time that he can see dead people and interact with them in an incredibly realistic way (pictured, Jamie Bell, who plays his father).
On the subway home, Harry keeps appearing and disappearing as Adam loses his grip on reality.
At the end of the film, Adam enters Harry’s apartment and finds an empty bag of drugs and a bottle of whiskey before seeing Harry’s body and realizing that he has overdosed.
It is implied that the body is in an advanced state of decomposition as Adam recoils from the smell, suggesting that he has been dead for a long time and no one has noticed.
However, is Adam also dead?
Some theories suggest that the main character is not alive either, which is why he can interact with dead people so easily.
Adam strangely lives in an empty apartment block, perhaps implying that there is a reason no one else resides there or that he doesn’t really live there at all.
At the beginning of the film a fire alarm sounds, prompting the theory that Adam died in a fire that day, trapping his spirit with Harry.
Discussing this theory, director Andrew Haigh said: “Someone asked me the other day if everyone had died when the building burned. They said, ‘Oh, did the building burn at the beginning or at the end?’ And I said, ” Building burned?”
However, is Adam also dead? Some theories suggest that the main character is no longer alive, which is why he can interact with dead people so easily.
Another theory is that Adam and Harry’s parents are not real ghosts that Adam interacts with, however, they could also simply be a figment of his imagination.
‘But it’s because there’s a fire alarm at the beginning, and I think someone thought that maybe when he went out and came back in, they both burned to death in the apartment and the rest is some kind of purgatory.
—The truth is that I like that idea. I know a lot of people think that maybe Adam isn’t alive and I can understand why they might think that. The close-up is strange and sometimes I think maybe he’s not alive either.’
Another debate is whether ghosts are real or not.
There is a theory that Adam and Harry’s parents are not real ghosts and could simply be a figment of Adam’s imagination.
Early on we learn that Adam is writing a script about his parents, so all the visits to his childhood home could be imagined as part of his project.
However, this does not explain why Adam cannot understand that Harry is also a ghost even though he knows this to be true of his parents.
Either way, Adam has selected these figures from his life out of his own loneliness and pain as he struggles to overcome his childhood trauma and find his place in the world.