All of Us Strangers
Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: December 22, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
90
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
52
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 29, 2024
It’s a remarkable achievement – a raw and potent piece of storytelling that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go. Read full review
100
NMEPaul BradshawJan 25, 2024
It might be brutally upsetting at times, but Haigh’s film disarms you with its tenderness – leaving you with something much more profound to say about the connections we make and break along the way. Read full review
100
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyJan 25, 2024
In Andrew Haigh’s melancholy ghost story, where real ghosts are out-haunted by words left unsaid, Scott, an actor of fierce intelligence, channels shrewdness into tragedy for the greatest performance of his career. Read full review
100
EmpireAlex GodfreyJan 22, 2024
It’s hard to think of another recent drama that feels so brazenly personal, so yearning, so naked and vulnerable. It feels like forgiveness, for Haigh himself, and maybe for others. He’s letting it all out. These characters are a lifeline for him, too. Read full review
100
Little White LiesHannah StrongJan 22, 2024
It’s a ghost story, but it’s a love story too. One that will break your heart. Read full review
100
USA TodayBrian TruittJan 18, 2024
To call it haunting might be trite but also spot on: With a terrific performance from Andrew Scott as a queer screenwriter at a crossroads, “Strangers” is the sort of cinematic balm that not only touches your soul but takes up prime real estate. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 22, 2023
There’s not a bad performance among the central quartet here (Mescal once again proves that he’s a character actor stuck with a matinee idol’s square-jawed mug), but Scott is the one subtly shouldering the storytelling. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 22, 2023
Its elegiac themes might make All of Us Strangers sound like a bummer, when it’s anything but. This is an intriguing, increasingly mystifying rabbit hole disguised as a romantic drama, with all the sensuous pleasures the genre suggests (not to mention some superfun synth-pop cuts from Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Pet Shop Boys). Read full review
100
BBCCaryn JamesDec 22, 2023
Haigh and his cast, including Paul Mescal as Adam's new lover, give this film about loss, enduring love and hope for the future such truth and poignance that it is easily among the best of the year. Read full review
100
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonDec 21, 2023
Haigh is a tremendously lyrical filmmaker, and All of Us Strangers unfolds in a space that seems like a dream, or a hallucination, pulsing with the rippling soul rush of love turning a life from monochrome to full color. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubMurtada ElfadlDec 20, 2023
Ultimately All Of Us Strangers says that only a lucky few get to free themselves to accept love and redemption. It’s a heartbreaking and sad notion, but when delivered with as much sensitivity and visual panache as Haigh does, it becomes cathartic. Read full review
100
Time OutAnna BogutskayaNov 30, 2023
All of Us Strangers is a miraculously uncheesy study of loneliness, forgiveness and, above all, the power of love. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyOct 12, 2023
The film is heroically unabashed about the power of love, expressed through extraordinary photography (by Jamie D Ramsay, who lifted Living), and a quartet of stars bouncing off each other to hit stratospheric acting highs. It shimmers, and it aches. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeOct 5, 2023
It has the precision of retooled memory. It speaks to experienced time and place. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 1, 2023
More than any great movie I can remember, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers captures the eerie, disorienting and utterly sacred experience of encountering a lost loved one in your dreams. Read full review
100
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 1, 2023
The latest from Andrew Haigh is an exquisitely melancholy fantasy-infused meditation on loss and isolation. A luxuriantly sad and skin-tinglingly sensual gay romance, it is propelled by a killer combination of 80s queer pop and a pair of devastating performances from Scott and Mescal. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 1, 2023
While it unfolds in a hazy dream state rooted in Adam’s loneliness and the emotional suspension that has blocked him from moving forward, it’s by no means a downer. It’s a thing of beauty, heartfelt and unforgettable. Read full review
100
Total FilmMatt MaytumSep 1, 2023
Told with economy, and evading any easy genre classification - it’s part romance, part fantasy, part thriller, and more besides - it’s a very moving piece of work, and a testament to the power of love. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 1, 2023
The film is an enormously satisfying and affecting experience. Read full review
100
TheWrapTomris LafflySep 1, 2023
In a lot of ways, All Of Us Strangers is a poignant, deeply melancholic exercise on the attempt to bridge the past with the present, a cosmic inquiry into resolving all that was unsaid through second chances that never were. Read full review
91
Original-CinKaren GordonDec 20, 2023
A major factor in making this work as well it does are the performances, which are pitch perfect. Read full review
91
ColliderEmma KielyOct 9, 2023
From the directing to the script to the acting, All of Us Strangers is a film that will stay with you long after you watch it. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 3, 2023
Grief is a funny animal; it tangles itself in our organs and sinews, permanently altering how we love, how we see ourselves, and how we make sense of our identity. That's what Haigh is unraveling here, with a bittersweet emphasis on the power of love and its ability to transcend even death itself. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 1, 2023
Haigh tells this potentially maudlin story with such a light touch that even its biggest reveals hit like a velvet hammer, and his screenplay so movingly echoes Adam’s yearning to be known — across time and space — that the film always feels rooted in his emotional present, even as it pings back and forth between dimensions. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 3, 2024
All of Us Strangers, defies easy categorization in the usual fashion. But it’s also easy to place it in one category: that of really, really good movies. Read full review
90
ABC NewsPeter TraversDec 22, 2023
Andrew Haigh’s enthralling ghost story concerns a screenwriter (a flawless Andrew Scott) coming to terms with a new love (Paul Mescal) and the parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) who died in his childhood. Watch out for Haigh and his four superlative actors. They’ll get you good. Read full review
90
VoxAlissa WilkinsonNov 30, 2023
Emotional and lyrical, All of Us Strangers is a meditation on what it means to really be a human. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesChase HutchinsonJan 5, 2024
Through it all, Scott gives one of the year’s best performances, creating life in small moments. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 4, 2024
All of Us Strangers is a lovely way to begin 2024, not because it’s especially seasonal — though one key scene takes place around Christmastime — but because it’s just so beautifully acted and tenderly observant. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonJan 3, 2024
It’s simultaneously cathartic and heartbreaking. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyJan 2, 2024
This potentially maudlin stuff is elevated by the work of all of the actors. What matters here is not just what is being said, but the emotions underneath. Read full review
88
The Associated PressLindsey BahrJan 2, 2024
Haigh dares audiences to meet “All of Us Strangers” on its own astral plane as we whiplash between past and present in a dreamy 35mm haze of nightclubs and ‘80s sweaters. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenDec 17, 2023
Devastation without manipulation. That’s the miracle pulled off by writer-director Andrew Haigh with All of Us Strangers, his supple adaptation of a novel by Taichi Yamada. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 6, 2023
There are bigger films and more entertaining stories coming to screens this holiday season. But there isn’t one more life and love-affirming than All of Us Strangers, a movie that reminds us that memory burnishes loved ones for a reason. Read full review
88
ObserverLaura BabiakOct 2, 2023
Filmmaker Andrew Haigh strikes gold in this moving, heart-wrenching drama about the lasting trauma of grief, isolation and the all-too-human fear of loneliness. Read full review
83
The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsOct 3, 2023
Even in its overwhelming melancholic power, Haigh has made something therapeutic—about longing and holding on and learning to let go. Read full review
83
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 1, 2023
We’d be reminiscent to not admit this is the sort of movie that’s hard to shake. We haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Considering how rare that is, maybe that’s just as gracious a compliment as admitting to bawling while the credits roll. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiOct 28, 2023
With a moving performance by Andrew Scott, the fantasy drama is compelling and captivating as it tackles grief, loneliness, and all that is lost to trauma and the inability to move on past loss. Read full review
80
The Daily BeastColeman SpildeOct 4, 2023
Haigh is otherworldly when it comes to capturing not only the feeling of falling in love but all of the fear of vulnerability that comes along with it. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 1, 2023
The entire journey is not based in logic so much as a kind of emotional intuition, and as such, no two viewers will experience it the same way. What strikes some as manipulative will crack open others, as the film offers a kind of connection that’s all too rare, and maybe even impossible. Read full review
79
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJan 3, 2024
Director Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Lean on Pete) knows how to build towering moments of human drama from the tiniest foundations. And he mostly pulls off such a feat again in this tale of grief and generational pain. Read full review
78
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerOct 2, 2023
A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 19, 2024
Although aspects of All of Us Strangers have a cheesy flavor, the raw honesty of the movie’s best moments propel the narrative through its less credible pitstops. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJan 8, 2024
Part psychological thriller, part moody thought piece, part romance, “All of Us Strangers” feels like a feature-length update of a classic “Twilight Zone” episode, and we mean that as a high compliment. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 13, 2023
With any other actor, All of Us Strangers was bound to be an emotional film, but Scott has a way of going down to the nerve endings. He makes the movie into something raw and deep. Read full review
70
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJan 10, 2024
For all its droll shading of the screenwriter’s art, “All of Us Strangers” is a screenwriter’s movie, in which the power of intention over observation, of the blueprint over the finished product, is asserted with a vengeance. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesDec 22, 2023
The film, though lush, thoughtful and at times affecting, never fully escapes a certain therapeutic mode. It doesn’t depict life lived, exactly; it depicts life theorized. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreDec 22, 2023
There’s an admirable defiance to Haigh’s interest in characters who aren’t easy in their own sexual identities, who don’t feel in sync with queer culture, and who struggle with scars from the past and internalized shame that doesn’t go away just because it’s unreasonable. Read full review
70
IGNLena WilsonOct 19, 2023
You’ve likely never seen a movie that tackles the specific loneliness many gay men still face today, and this one is laudable for that alone. However, All of Us Strangers airs on the side of saccharine, especially towards the end, and it would benefit overall from some more human ugliness. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 1, 2023
For all of its piercing insight and arresting performances, its steamy sex, its devastating conclusions, the film operates at a remove, from behind a pane of glass. Perhaps because Haigh gives Adam so little tether to the realm of the real; so much of the film is lost in plaintive reverie. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleAlejandra MartinezJan 4, 2024
Frankly, it feels strange that a movie with so much to say about loss wants to wallow in it when a chance at joy was right there. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferSep 25, 2023
Andrew Haigh’s film always feels perched on the precipice of unlocking a deeper register. Read full review
55
SlashfilmMike ShuttNov 3, 2023
The film seems like it should be this deeply personal exploration of one's own struggle to connect with others because of an inability to fully accept themself, but in practice, "All of Us Strangers" plays more like a sentimental novel you'd find at an airport newsstand. It's made with far more skill and care than those typically are, but at its core, they contain about the same amount of emotional insight. Read full review
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