Do people still get rabies?

Finishing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2024

#1 :  All Of Us Strangers

Whether All Of Us Strangers is a ghost story, a romance, a fantasy spawned from the mind of its grief-stricken protagonist, or all of the above, remains very much up for debate. The great beauty of Andrew Haigh’s supernaturally-inflected piece, though, lies in the way its raw emotion more than sustains any interpretation. Andrew Scott is on career-best form as forty-something gay writer Adam, who — in between cathartic visits to his childhood home, where his dead parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) somehow live on — finds himself falling for Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other soul in his purgatorial London high-rise. On the one hand an achingly romantic tale of queer longing and self-discovery, and on the other a searing exploration of the blood-deep ties that bind parents and their children, Strangers offers a love story for the ages on multiple levels. And that ending? Oh boy…

When I first heard about this, my first thought was that any film with Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy in it is bound to be worth watching - and so, of course, I've never watched it. So I'm looking forward to it, even though it sounds from the above that it could be a bit strange.

And yeah, it's a bit strange. I can quite understand that the critics loved it, but I can also understand how "normal" people hated it - it really doesn't go out of its way to explain what's going on, so if you're looking for one of those films with, i don't know,  a plot that, i don't know, makes sense, then this might not be for you.

It's basically two intertwining stories - Adam (Andrew Scott) is a sad man, partly because he's lonely and partly because he's still grieving for his parents, who died many years earlier. And wouldn't you know it - he bumps into Harry (Paul Mescal) who might possibly solve help with the former and he (quite obviously) returns to his childhood home to find his Mum (Claire Foy) and Dad (Jamie Bell) still living there, who are either going to solve the latter or make things a hell of a lot worse.

The Adam/Harry storyline is nominally a straightforward love story, except for some slightly strange details eg why are they the only two people living in a tower block (and how did they film that?). The Adam/parents storyline is just straight-up weird, but presented in such a straightforward manner that you just run with it. The parents are written in a way that they know they're dead and they know they've missed out on him growing up - they just want to know everything, without having the context to even understand what questions make sense any more. It also allows for honest conversations to be had which wouldn’t always happen between parents and children, enabling both sides to admit that things could have handled better.

As the film progresses, the two storylines somewhat converge and are brought to, for me, satisfying yet open-ended conclusions - one in particular went somewhat I wasn't expecting that I feel would probably cast new light on several of the scenes in a rewatch. There's a lot of discussion around it on the internet with many people saying they were in floods of tears - I can't say it hit me that way, but I can believe if I was gay, alone and/or had lost my parents then I might well have reacted differently. 

It's all very well acted - Andrew Scott takes centre stage and handles both his loneliness and the various relationships. Paul Mescal feels somewhat underused, but plays his part well and Claire Foy and Jamie Bell make a fine middle-aged couple - amusingly they're both younger than Andrew Scott, but it just adds to the charm.

It was written and directed by Andrew Haigh (loosely based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada) who we previously met taking the same roles on this, and whilst the subject matter is very different, the same feelings of brooding isolation and the need for human contact are present. This is definitely a step up though, it's an interestingly written ambiguous tale which is well shot with some lovely lighting. Amusingly, Wikipedia tells us that it was his childhood home that was used to shoot the scenes for Adam's childhood home.

I liked this film, particularly the "going back to your childhood home to chat to your dead parents" idea which just seems like a really neat idea and it's used very effectively here, but not overused so I suspect it allows everyone to put their own spin on it or have their own "what would I say?" thoughts. I don't think it's the film I enjoyed most on the list (and that's going to be an interesting discussion when we get to it) but I can understand the critics saying it's the "best" film of the year. I certainly think it's worth a watch, but I wouldn't recommend it if you like your films to make sense. Or maybe, more accurately, if you like your films to tell you how it makes sense - I feel there's plenty of ways in which you can tell yourself it makes sense and no-one's going to be able to tell you you're wrong. If you fancy it, it's available to stream on Disney+ (our first film there on the list) or to rent in all the usual places.

And with that, we're done with our first list of 2024 - and a pretty decent list it was too! Full write-up to follow, including a decision as to my best films of the year. 

#2 - Maybe not as great as it thinks it is?