ALL OF US STRANGERS 4K Review: Andrew Haigh's Ghostly Film of Queer Isolation

One of the absolute finest films of 2023 and of filmmaker Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed career thus far (including 2011’s Weekend and 2015’s 45 Years), All of Us Strangers has come out as part of the Criterion Collection.  

Dark, enigmatic, rippling, and ghostly, All of Us Strangers resonates as a queer character study by identity and by extension.  It stars Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, and Claire Foy.  That is basically the entire cast.

Perhaps predictably, the moody, atmospherically nocturnal film was a tough sell in theaters insofar as it’s a very pained story of disconnect, loss, and self-isolation.  Few modern high-profile films plumb the queer psyche as delicately and as honestly as All of Us Strangers. 

Almost entirely, it unspools in the mental darkness of Adam (Andrew Scott), a single gay man in his forties who, years ago, came of age orphaned in homophobically hardlined London.  As a boy, he was suddenly orphaned when both of his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) were killed in a terrible car crash.  

He never had the chance to tell them he’s gay, for them to truly know him for who he is.  As depressive as that sounds, Haigh’s film is somehow life affirming in the most universally mysterious of ways.  Like a dream that just goes on, it drifts into itself.

All of Us Strangers is what Shelagh Rowan-Legg’s ScreenAnarchy review of the film refers to as “a ghostly love story;” one from a filmmaker with “a particular insight into a certain depth of loneliness, and a flair for portraying that on screen.”  She goes on to state, “Being queer means a different kind of isolation… and Haigh examines those whom especially don't fall into the heteronormative life cycle of marriage and children, and how that makes those of a certain age, especially without family, even more isolated.”

In communicating such an internal existence externally, Haigh’s film hangs in the guarded tension of the heretofore closeted self-awakening in a world that has only recently opened up to people like him and his main character, Adam.  Maybe tellingly, Adam is a screenwriter.  A screenwriter who, per professional predilection, is even more internally isolated and detached from the outside world than most of his professional peers.  (And that’s saying something).  

Residing in a mostly empty upper-class housing complex that is the very definition of sharp-angled glassy soullessness, Adam wafts along in a lived-in awkwardness that is masterfully realized by actor Andrew Scott.  One night, after some earlier awkward eye contact from afar, Adam meets Harry, the only other resident in their building.  Like Adam, Harry is lonely and queer.  Unlike Adam, he is almost aggressively forward, and prone to self-abuse.  Their romantic pairing isn’t nearly as easy or natural as one may guess.

Part of the issue is that one day, quite surprisingly, Adam sees his long-dead father- still the age he was when he died- at a nearby park.  Once prompted, he follows him back to his childhood home, where his mother -- similarly preserved in time, along with the whole rest of the house -- is waiting. 

Here, Adam finds not only a renewed feeling of comfort and safety but is able to finally address unfinished personal matters with them.  Adam understands that this kind of thing can’t happen… and yet it is.  The question then becomes, how long can it last?

More from Shelagh Rowan-Legg: “Whether or not Mum and Dad are literal ghosts, or this is all just in Adam's imagination, is perhaps not relevant - he needs to understand his parents, and needs them to understand him, to know how he got to where he is - a lonely road he had to walk alone, but perhaps he doesn't have to anymore. All four of the actors are operating on profoundly raw emotional levels - finding such nuance in expression of their joy, their pain, their desire, and their fervent wish that things could have been different, had fate not played a cruel hand.”

Haigh steps out of his dramatic real-world comfort zone to expertly realize the ghostliness of it all.  Long cross dissolves, pronounced nonverbal moments, and an experimental electronic score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch are just a few of the elements working in harmony to render Haigh’s very loose adaptation of the supernatural novel Strangers, by author Taichi Yamada.  

Unfortunately true to form, the brilliant and haunting All of Us Strangers went overlooked and ignored by the 2024 Academy Awards, although it made a fine showing in many of the run-up ceremonies. The Searchlight Pictures film, being hopelessly part of the Disney Industrial Complex, seemed destined to tragically fade from collective memory.  Criterion’s announcement that it would not only be issued on physical media but in high style within such close proximity to its theatrical run came as a very pleasant surprise to many, including myself.  

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As photographed by Jamie D. Ramsey (Living), All of Us Strangers exudes a beguilingly luminous vibe throughout.  The exquisite look of the film pops wondrously via Criterion’s 4K digital master as viewed on its 4K UHD disc, particularly thanks to the perfect implementation of Dolby Vision HDR.  

Criterion remains extremely selective about which of its 4K UHD releases get HDR, a process which enables an unprecedented range of vibrancy.  Hopefully more is to come.  This HDR 4K transfer, utilizing 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks, is ideal home theater demo material.  It is truly, truly stunning.

Additionally, there’s a Blu-ray disc containing the film and Criterion’s special features, allowing the 4K disc’s superior visual capabilities to go entirely to the film itself.  Criterion’s relatively modest bonus features for All of Us Strangers are led by a new 26-minute in-person conversation between director Andrew Haigh and author and critic Michael Koresky.  Haigh is very articulate and refreshingly forthright regarding his choices and intentions in making the film, including the vastness of differences between his adaptation and the 1987 source novel.  

He and Koresky discuss how the novel, being not overtly queer by any measure, served as an ideal jumping-off point for this tremendously personal work.  From there, the middle-aged Haigh shares the ingrained stigma of growing up gay in England in a time when people like him were systematically rejected.  The conversation gets increasingly interesting as Koresky and Haigh consider and explore how All of Us Strangers traffics in notions of untethered “queer time” and its uniquely lonely vibe.  

Next is another new interview, this one’s with cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay.  Ramsay’s interview makes overt just how central the establishment and maintenance of mood through manipulation of light, shadow, and camera technology is the true job of the cinematographer.  

Ramsey discloses how he utilized zoom lenses to realize Haigh’s intentions of “sliding time”, as well as how he used contemporary digital LED lights for Adam’s present-day life, and old-school analog lights for the character’s visits into the past.  Without demystifying this intensely mysterious film, we learn, at a pass, what it took to cultivate All of Us Strangers’ “feeling of an inaccessibility of life.”

Beyond the new interviews, the remaining extras are holdovers from the film’s original theatrical run.  As that theatrical run was less than one year ago at the time of this release (this is the first domestic physical media release for All of Us Strangers), it really wouldn’t be stretch to call everything, even the movie itself, “new.”  

In any case, there’s a 22-minute “documentary” anchored by lead actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, as well as two more much shorter specific featurettes.  They are called “Roots of the Story” and “Building Adam’s World,” focusing respectively on the story’s ideas and adaptation, and how the film’s locations play into Haigh’s personal vision.  (The house of Adam’s parents is in fact the exact house in which the director grew up).  

For the final words on this extremely satisfying Criterion UHD, I’ll once again look to Shelagh’s review, which prophetically evokes a connection to the mythological past and future-seeing namesake Criterion’s umbrella distribution company, Janus Films: “All of Us Strangers is a deeply affective film, of love and loneliness, understanding and anger, joy and terrible sorrow, and the paths that lead backwards and ahead.”

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Criterion's Offical Features List:

•            4K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks

•            One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features

•            New conversation between director Andrew Haigh and author and critic Michael Koresky

•            New interview with cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay

•            Behind-the-scenes documentary and featurettes

•            Trailer

•            English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio

•            PLUS: An essay by film critic Guy Lodge

New cover by Anthony Gerace