A ghost story that haunts you in ways you don't see coming. That's one way to describe "All of Us Strangers," now casting its spell in theaters as audiences begin to realize that this enthralling two-hour gift of cinematic hypnosis has the power to sneak up and floor you.
Things start quietly as the flawless Andrew Scott, who made hearts flutter as the hot priest in "Fleabag," eases into the role of Adam, a gay, 40-ish, British screenwriter struggling to put together a script based on his profound feelings of loss over the death of his parents, who were killed in a car accident coming home from a Christmas party when Adam was only 12.
A loneliness has seeped into Adam's life since then. You can see it in his yearning gaze, feel it in the flat he's chosen in a coldly modern highrise with the lights of London flickering at a distance.
MORE: Review: 'The Zone of Interest' is hard to watch, but impossible to forgetHarry, a flirtatious new tenant strikingly played by "Aftersun" Oscar nominee Paul Mescal, tries to bring Adam out of his isolation. But the pull of memory draws Adam inexorably into the past.
The situation intensifies when Adam boards a train to the suburbs to visit his old home. Amazingly, his parents -- played by a sublime Jamie Bell and a never-better Claire Foy -- are in residence, looking as youthfully alive as they did when Adam was a child.
What's going on? I won't snitch, except to say that the supernatural is not evoked to frighten but to deepen character. In adapting the 1987 novel by Taichi Yamada, director Andrew Haigh ("Weekend," "45 Years") deftly imbues his own personal journey into Adam's.
MORE: Review: 'Maestro' is Bradley Cooper's heart-full-to-bursting tour de force as Leonard BernsteinUntil now, Adam and his parents had avoided discussing his sexuality. Ghost dad isn't surprised, but mom is thrown by the confession and worried ("They say it's a very lonely kind of life"). Adam tells her that times have changed. Sure, but not in all things. Look how misplaced guilt still torments Adam even in the sexually fluid 21st century.
In separate conversations, Adam can't quite come to terms with his mother's rigidity or his father's admission that he probably shared a kinship with the homophobe bullies who sent Adam to bed weeping. The raw emotion uncovered in these scenes is staggering.
Scott's magnificent performance is some kind of miracle. He doesn't just know the nuances of how Adam moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. Scott, 47, and Mescal, 20 years younger and one the finest actors of his generation, bring in deep reserves of feeling.
There is also a real tenderness underlying each moment of pain. As a adult, Adam is getting a chance to come out to his parents and find the acceptance he never found as a boy. Haigh felt so close to these characters that he shot the family scenes in his own childhood home.
Adam is on unstable ground when his parents ask how they died. They want details. How did they look? Did they suffer? Things intensify when Adam asks Henry to accompany him on his next visit home, but reconciliation between the living and the dead is not easily won.
Yet "All of Us Strangers" is relatable to anyone who struggles with what remains unspoken between children and parents.
Directed with piercing intelligence and delicacy by Haigh, the film ends with a twist that perhaps this story of an artist has been building to from the start.
It's more than sexual healing that Adam needs from Henry, though they look hot at a dance club. It turns out that Henry's partyboy charm masks an inner turmoil that gradually reveals itself. In Scott, Mescal, Bell and Foy, Haigh has found four superlative actors who move us to tears in the space between words.
"All of Us Strangers" is essential viewing. It gets you good.
