All Of Us Strangers

This has gotten quite a lot of attention, but I just found it to be boring and annoying. Spoilers! Don’t read anything after this if you intend to watch this movie, because in the very next sentence I’m going to spoil the entire thing!

When Paul Mescal arrived I said “oh, right, Mescal is going to be the Magic Pixiel Dream Boy who’s going to die so that Andrew Scott is going to learn an important lesson. I’ve seen a movie before, you know.” (From memory, but I did say something like that.) I was just half joking, though, but it turned out that I was even more literally correct than I knew!

And yes, indeed, this movie is about a guy who writes movies. But he’s got a writer’s block. I.e., the entire thing is a Mary Sue, but with Mommy Issues. (Which makes a change from Daddy Issues.)

See, he’s learning a lesson about his life.

One thing I have to say, though, is that the movie is quite nice to look at. It’s shot well, and it has actual proper lighting instead of just fixing everything in post. Props to the cinematographer and the lighting people.

And all the actors do solid performances.

But it’s fucking tedious. I guess there’s supposed to be a Big Twist Reveal at the end, but it was signalled with Big Huge Whopping Neon Sign Sized Letters, so I was just impatient to get to the end.

I’ll give it a ⚁, because it looks good, but it’s really a ⚀. One of the most annoying movies I’ve watched in a while.

So of course it has a 96% tomatometer with reviews like:

Everybody likes it:

But I’m right.

All Of Us Strangers. Andrew Haigh. 2023. ⚁