Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s follow-up to his acclaimed drama 45 Years is a free adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s ghosty 1987 novel Strangers. The 80s are a big influence on this version, which re-fashions the book’s heterosexual narrative as a gay British love story, but Haigh’s mixing of the novel’s Japanese supernatural elements with local pop culture creates jarring cultural whiplash.

Andrew Scott plays Adam, a blocked writer living in a seemingly deserted yet modern tower block. The only other inhabitant is Harry (Aftersun’s Paul Mescal), who makes an awkward pass at the remote, introverted Adam. As the men’s tentative relationship develops, Adam slips into a fantasy world to meet his own deceased parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy), miraculously still young even though they died in an accident some 30 years previously. Harry and Adam enjoy ketamine-fuelled outings together, but is the weight of his unhappy past too substantial for Adam to escape and enjoy a future relationship with Harry?

With a stellar cast assembled, All Of Us Strangers is an awards front-runner, but Haigh’s lofty intentions prove intermittently mawkish here. The notion that Adam’s parents could potentially be evil spirits isn’t well developed at all and, by the third play of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘The Power Of Love’, audiences may feel that Haigh is as much in thrall to the story’s nostalgic trimmings as Adam is.

All Of Us Strangers is a story about a gay man seeking validation, from partners, from parents, and even from ghosts. The reliably intense Scott is an ideal choice to play the cerebral yet naïve Adam, and Foy and Bell manage to make Adam’s parents more than just dated sitcom caricatures. An acting masterclass elevates All Of Us Strangers, but increasingly excessive sentiment stops Haigh from hitting the dramatic high-spots he’s previously achieved. 

All Of Us Strangers is in cinemas from Friday 26 January.