One of the saddest, most beautiful movies of the year was snubbed by the Oscars (despite nominations and wins elsewhere) – but when it arrives on Hulu on February 22, 2024, it should hopefully find the wider audience it deserves. All Of Us Strangers is a story of grief and of love, and it's absolutely heartbreaking: even the most stony-hearted reviewers have admitted to having a big old cry.
All Of Us Strangers focuses on Adam (Andrew Scott), a sweet but lonely man in his forties who spends his time watching old TV on the couch and occasionally raiding the fridge. He lives alone in a London tower block until he meets another equally lonely man, Harry (Paul Mescal), who appears to be the only other resident of the block. Both men crave connection, and what happens next is told in scenes that are sometimes surreal but never less than wholly affecting.
As the BFI puts it, "The two begin to connect, tentative and hungry, complementary and chafing. There are striking levels of intentionality, vulnerability and desire in their dynamic – superbly realised by Scott, rueful and pensive, and Mescal, puppyish and volatile." But this is only one half the film – in the the crucial other side, Adam visits his childhood home where he lived with his parents until they died in a car accident when he was a young teenager. But he finds them in his old home, the same age as when he last saw them, and spends multiple visits reconnecting with these… ghosts? Imaginary constructs?… to work through what's led him to end up so withdrawn and lonely.
While the film will land on Hulu in the US, we expect that means it'll arrive on Disney Plus in the rest of the world, under the Star label, soon enough.
Is All Of Us Strangers worth streaming?
Yes. It's not always an easy watch – the Globe and Mail describes it as a "tale of grief and generational pain" – but as reviewer Barry Hertz also says, it builds "towering moments of human drama from the tiniest foundations."
Empire magazine gave it the full five stars: "It’s hard to think of another recent drama that feels so brazenly personal, so yearning, so naked and vulnerable"; it's "a flawless film that reaches for the stars, and gets there. It aches and shimmers." USA Today says it's "the sort of cinematic balm that not only touches your soul but takes up prime real estate."
Writing in the Chicago Reader, Becca James says: "All of Us Strangers is a healing, heartbreaking, and haunting look at the human condition that will stay with viewers long after they’ve left the theater." And for Adam Graham of the Detroit News, "it's been a long time since a film has cast this kind of spell. It's worth holding onto." Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe spoke for many, praising lead actor Andrew Scott: "his work is Oscar-worthy."
Andrew Parker of The Gate calls it "an achingly beautiful meditation on love and grief." For him, All Of Us Strangers "is the best film of the year and one of the decade’s absolute finest."
Those on team TechRadar who saw it basically had to plan a support group to talk through it afterwards – it's the kind of movie where you need someone else who's seen it to explore it with.
All Of Us Strangers will be streaming on Hulu from 22 February.
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