The fantasy-romance film All of Us Strangers is finally on Hulu after its theatrical release last year. If you’ve made it to the end of All of Us Strangers, you probably have more questions than answers — and a box of tissues at hand thanks to the emotional final scenes.
Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, the film stars Andrew Scott as Adam, a British screenwriter trying to write a script about his parents (played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) who passed away in a car accident when he was a child. He starts to interact with his deceased parents in his childhood home, who appear to be living life just as they were. The movie also centers on Adam’s blossoming relationship with his mysterious neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal).
“Our job as actors is to build, to service this extraordinary, amazing relationship that Andrew [Haigh] created, and it was really, really easy for us to do that,” Scott told Out Magazine of Harry and Adam’s chemistry. “I think both of us are really interested in playing romantic love. I think it’s something that we both really take pleasure in acting, so it was very, very, very easy for both of us.”
“A lot of the things that Harry’s experiencing, I knew and understood,” Mescal added. “The party culture side to Harry is like a tool that he uses to escape, but in terms of queer culture and in terms of learning…I have a proximity to that in my own life, so it didn’t feel like that part of it wasn’t necessarily eye-opening or anything to me personally.”
Written and directed by Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers beautifully tackles grief, loss and loneliness while also telling a queer love story. “All the people in the film are longing for something – to be understood, to be known,” Haigh told The Guardian. “There’s a generation of queer people grieving for the childhood they never had. I think there’s a sense of nostalgia for something we never got, because we were so tormented. It feels close to grief. It dissipates, but it’s always there. It’s like a knot in your stomach.”
Explore the ending of All of Us Strangers below.
How Does All of Us Strangers End?
After Adam tries to introduce Harry to his parents, Harry runs off. Adam takes a few final moments with his deceased mom and dad until they decide that they shouldn’t keep visiting one another so Adam can move on. He says goodbye, and now Adam can begin to process his grief.
Adams returns to his building and heads to Harry’s apartment (remember: viewers never actually see inside his boyfriend’s flat or see Harry out on his own). When Adam knocks on the door, no one answers. Adam goes into the apartment and sees Harry’s body on the bed. He’s wearing the same clothes from the first night he knocked on Adam’s door, asking to hang out.
What Happened To Harry In All of Us Strangers?
Harry has been dead for a majority of the time he’s been with Adam in All of Us Strangers. If you think back to the scene when the couple first met, Harry knocked on Adam’s door drunk and asked him to hang out while holding a bottle of whiskey, which Adam declines. When they run into each other the next day, Harry apologizes — and their relationship begins at the same time as Adam’s ghostly reconnection with his parents.
When Adam enters Harry’s apartment, he notices drugs on the counter and a messy kitchen. Then, he discovers Harry’s dead body on the bed, along with an empty alcohol bottle, suggesting he drank it and died from loneliness that night. So, what does this all mean? Well, everything that happened after their first meeting was all in Adam’s imagination.
In another twist, Harry’s ghost reappears outside his apartment. He slowly starts to put the pieces together that he is dead and no one has found his body. “I’m in there, aren’t I?” Harry asks him, while Adam reassures him that everything will be okay.
Adam and Harry enter Adam’s flat and cuddle on his bed. Adam puts on the song “The Power of Love,” the track playing at the beginning of the movie. As the shot pans, a bright light forms between them and they become one star in the sky out of many in the universe.
Haigh told Time that by the end of the film, “It is basically saying that what is important in life is love in whatever way you manage to find that, whether it’s in a relationship, whether it’s with your parents, whether it’s with a friend.” He continued, “You go through life finding love, losing love, and finding it again.”
Is Adam Dead In All of Us Strangers?
It’s unclear whether Adam is dead now that we know Harry was gone for most of the film. However, there are a few moments in All of Us Strangers point to Adam being a ghost. For example, he lives in a deserted block of empty apartments, which is uncommon for a bustling city like London.
Ultimately, whether you believe Adam is alive or a ghost is up to your perception of the film. Haigh expressed to EW that he doesn’t care for the logic behind the ending of All of Us Strangers and what’s real or what’s not. “It’s about the emotional feeling that you get from it,” Haigh says of the film. “That’s the key.”
Stream All of Us Strangers on Hulu.
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