All of Us Strangers ending spoilers follow.
All of Us Strangers has been leaving viewers in tears since it was first released in cinemas. The movie is now available to watch on Disney+ (UK) and Hulu (US).
The movie's unforgettable ending is not only shocking and devastating, but also quite mysterious. Here we try to unwrap all the unanswered questions of one of the best movies of 2024.
A loose adaptation of Taichi Yamada's novel Strangers, the story follows screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) as he revisits his childhood home and reunites with his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), who died 30 years ago in a car accident.
The final act will leave you with plenty of questions about what really happened to Harry, but it could also leave you wondering whether Adam had met the same dark fate as his neighbour, given that he can see his dead parents.
Writer/director Andrew Haigh is generally happy for you to come to your own conclusions about the various mysteries and reveals of All of Us Strangers.
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But if you just want to know what's going on, let's dig into that as we explore the emotional ending of All of Us Strangers. Needless to say, major spoilers await.
All of Us Strangers ending explained
After sharing some soul-healing moments together, Adam's parents realise it's time to say goodbye. Adam is getting too consumed by this ghostly reality, and he needs to make peace with their deaths and move on.
After sharing one last meal full of nostalgic memories, they disappear.
Adam might be sad, but he has also come out stronger from this experience. He even finds himself brave enough to go knock on Harry's door. Adam has never been in his apartment before, and we're about to find out why.
After opening the suspiciously unlocked door, Adam is hit by a strong smell coming from the place. When he looks in the bedroom, he finds Harry's dead body. He appears to have died a while ago, given the state of decomposition of the body.
The 'dead all along' trope has never been so devastating.
Harry's ghost shows up in the apartment as if nothing has happened, but he quickly catches up. "I'm in there, aren't I?" he asks Adam, right before he melts completely at the realisation of his own passing.
Adam consoles him as he leads him back to his own flat.
They lie in bed, Adam folding his arm around Harry. 'The Power of Love' by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (the same song that was playing on TV the first time they met) starts playing in the background.
The camera pulls away from them. They become a glowing light getting smaller and smaller, and soon they are surrounded by a constellation of other star-like lights.
In an interview with Digital Spy, writer/director Andrew Haigh explained what this ending means, and why it didn't need to be a happy ending:
"There is a way in which this film could have ended on a very optimistic, joyful note. To me, that would have been a little bit simplistic in terms of what the story is trying to unpick and understand, which is about the actual nature, the essence of love, and what is important within that."
In an interview with EW, producer Graham Broadbent argued it can be a "more optimistic" interpretation of the ending of the movie.
"There's something in Andrew's filmmaking. Although it's a sad story, there's something kinder and gentler and more beautiful, more generous. People might perceive the end of the film as being sad, but I think when you watch it again and again, you see it's actually more optimistic."
Was Harry dead the entire time?
It's not completely revealed in the movie, but it's fair to assume that Harry died the same night he met Adam.
When Harry's body is discovered, he's holding the same bottle that he had when he visited Adam and he is also wearing the same pink sweatshirt. This suggests that after he was knocked back by Adam, Harry died after he went back to his flat.
It's not confirmed how he died, but the drugs and alcohol Adam finds in the living area of Harry's flat suggests that Harry overdosed.
When Harry shows up at Adam's door with a bottle of whiskey, he is most probably alive. He is a lonely young man looking for company and human connection, but Adam is wary and rejects his proposition.
"I was so scared that night. I just needed to not be alone," Harry's ghost recalls later on, when his body is found.
But if nearly all of Adam's interactions with Harry were after his death, does this reveal something devastating about Adam too?
Was Adam dead the whole time in All of Us Strangers?
Since we're never explicitly told how Adam is interacting with Harry and the ghosts of his dead parents, it's led some viewers to believe that Adam is actually dead all along too.
The movie can be interpreted as a paranormal story where ghosts are real and Adam happens to be able to see them. We can also think Adam is dead too, either the whole movie or at some other point, meaning the final scene is him joining Harry in an otherworldly realm.
One potential issue with this reading of the movie is that in Adam's final meal with his parents, we do see him interact with a waitress at the diner and also with other people at the club scene earlier in the movie.
The fact that Adam and Harry's apartment block is suspiciously empty has led some to think it could be a version of purgatory, a place where Adam can address the unresolved trauma in his life.
In many ways, it doesn't matter which way you interpret All of Us Strangers because, like Adam's journey, it's all about how it makes us feel rather than whether it's real or not. The emotion is the only thing that needs to be real.
In an episode of EW's Awardist podcast, Andrew Scott revealed he sees the movie as a dream:
"You wake up from a very, very potent dream and you can feel so sad; you can wake up with floods of tears; you can wake up screaming; you can wake up laughing. I don't think you go, 'What happened in the dream? Let's rewind it.'
"We try desperately to understand it, but I think Andrew's achievement is that he directs us towards the feeling, rather than the logic of what the feeling might be. The most important thing, and the most difficult thing to do, is making the audience genuinely moved."
Was there a fire in All of Us Strangers?
One potential explanation if Adam really was dead the entire time comes early on in the movie when Adam has to evacuate his apartment block due to a fire alarm.
A fan theory on Reddit has suggested that there really was a fire and Adam didn't make it out alive (dark, we know). It could also link to the fact that we see Adam coughing throughout the movie (more on that in a bit).
However, one sticking point with this theory is that it's after this evacuation that Adam meets Harry for the first time and rejects his advances. If we're to assume this is what led to Harry dying by suicide, it doesn't add up – unless Harry was turned down by a ghost.
Why is Adam coughing in All of Us Strangers?
Another mystery, albeit a subtler one, in All of Us Strangers is why Adam appears to get sicker every time he visits his parents.
As with the ending, there's not a clear answer given in the movie, but it's likely a nod to the source material for the movie: Taichi Yamada's 1987 novel Strangers.
In that, 47-year-old scriptwriter Hideo meets somebody who looks exactly like his dead father, and when he goes to visit him, the man is living with a woman who looks exactly like his dead mother.
He also starts to have an affair with his neighbour, and as Hideo visits both his dead parents and continues to see his neighbour, Hideo finds his health begins to deteriorate. It's discovered that the ghosts are sucking the life out of Hideo.
It's as close of an explanation as we've got as to why Adam starts to cough and get weaker in the movie, and the only way he can get better is to say goodbye to his parents.
All of Us Strangers is now available to watch on Disney+ in the UK and on Hulu in the US.
Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
