For about 30 mins, this is one of the great recent movies about what it felt like to live through the COVID shutdowns. I was one of those people who moved into a new place during its height. My apartment complex, like the one Andrew Scott's Adam lives in, was eerily empty. It also had a balcony. I remember the long, deep quiet of those evenings looking out into the city, the building windows reflecting the orange-red glow of the sun. My body felt disassociated from the ground below, disassociated from the world. Walking outside, you might see a few stray other figures. We could be the first inhabitants of the city. Or the last. You had nowhere to really go. In fact, often the only place to go was, well, “in your feels.” 

That's where this movie lives. It didn't make the final cut, but in the interview I produced for NPR with Haigh, he told us how much of the film was informed by COVID -- the time it gave us to think about relationships past and present, the film's emphasis on human touch, which we craved so deeply in those early days, weeks, months.

Considering all that, I really appreciate what this movie is up to. And can forgive some of the easy catharsis of Adam's interactions with his parents. We too may have been looking for something similar in those days. Many of the big emotional scenes amount to wish fulfilment on Adam's part, and even a cringey form of self-pity. But speaking for myself, I was pretty pitiful in my lowest moments during the shutdowns, and I longed for release from my feelings, which I sought through work, through writing, through alcohol. It got messy. And this is a suitably messy movie. I can forgive some of that mess.

What I can't really forgive is the ending, which not only undermines a sensitive and tactile Paul Mescal performance, but is so hazardous to the film's emotional scaffolding that it even damages the parents stuff. The moment the movie goes into aesthetic freefall -- a strange and creaky montage bit with Scott and Mescal that then leads into a repetitive and confusing device of Scott startling himself awake in different places --- is further undone by the ending's rug pull. You wonder why Haigh even filmed the sequence at all, what purpose it actually serves. In fact, scene after scene starts feeling like Haigh pulling the rug out from under you. You lose your footing in the movie. The reveal about Mescal's character may clarify the way he comes off, but it just defeats everything he and Scott establish. And that final needle drop? Yuck. 

I guess ultimately "All of Us Strangers" is also a COVID film in just how out of control it feels. Haigh's emotions got the best of him, just as there were so many moments during the shutdown when  my emotions got the best of me. That didn't always produce good results. But they were honest. So much here is woefully misjudged. But it also feels honest.

(Hulu)