We need to talk about the ending of All of Us Strangers

26.02.2024 - 22:21 / polygon.com / James Cameron

Andrew Haigh’s dark love story All of Us Strangers arrived to Hulu on Feb. 22, after two quiet months of building up word of mouth in theaters. Debuting just before Christmas and competing with a lot of more bombastic releases, it initially reached a small audience — but it was evident that it made an impression, as critics and viewers spun out lengthy online analyses and discussions of its memorable, divisive ending.

Here at Polygon, we’re united in admiring the film, but we disagree about the impact of that ending — whether it’s necessary, fair to the characters, constructive to the film, you name it. And when we have strong disagreements on Polygon’s entertainment team, we send the case to Polygon Court, as we did when we debated the alternate ending of James Cameron’s Titanic, the most important part of the Fast and Furious franchise, the problem of Spider in Avatar: The Way of Water, and the song cut from The Muppet Christmas Carol, among other knotty pop culture cases.

In this case, we have divergent opinions on what the end of All of Us Strangers accomplishes. Polygon Court is now in session.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for All of Us Strangers.]

All of Us Strangers is a quiet love story about a lonely, isolated screenwriter, Adam (Andrew Scott), who returns to his childhood home while working on a script, and finds his parents there, even though they died when he was a child. Over the course of the movie, he gets some much-needed closure with these ghosts, but they also gently tell him that his relationship with them is holding him back, and they leave him behind in a tearful scene.

At the same time all this is going on, Adam meets a neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other person already living in his high-rise apartment building. Harry shows up at Adam’s door drunk one night, seeking company. Adam, shy and awkward, shuts him out. Later, though, they reconnect, and launch an initially tentative, then passionate relationship. Adam eventually tries to introduce Harry to his ghost-parents, which goes poorly, and Harry flees. When Adam seeks him out, visiting Harry’s apartment for the first time, he finds that Harry is dead — and has been dead since the night of that first meeting, when Adam rebuffed him, and Harry returned to his own bed and overdosed.

In the movie’s final sequence, Adam accepts his lover as a ghost, comforts him, and curls up in bed with him. The camera slowly retreats, leaving them in darkness.

Tasha: Pete, the ending of All of Us Strangers had a powerful emotional effect on me. I found it stunning — the performances, the emotional tenor they bring to Adam and Harry’s relationship, the way the sequence pays off the themes that have been building throughout the