THE STRAYS MOVIE REVIEW!

The Strays movie review: Netflix’s new horror movie is unsettling, but unspectacular

A suburban horror that offers a salacious peek into the secretive lives of the almost-wealthy, a social thriller that exploits their fears, and eventually, a home invasion movie that outstays its own welcome, The Strays is the kind of film that will either flatter Jordan Peele or compel him to mount a lawsuit.

Out now on Netflix, The Strays follows in the footsteps of both Get Out and Us, as it unpacks the deep-rooted, racially driven rot of contemporary society, and attempts to present its findings through a decidedly uncomfortable lens. Ashley Madekwe plays Neve, a woman who — and this is something we’re made privy to in the film’s tense opening moments — escaped an abusive life in a UK council estate, and some years later, rebranded herself as an upper-middle class elite.

Neve is Black, but she can pass for white, a cruel twist of genetics that maybe gave her the confidence to alter her entire identity. Presumably presented with several options — she could have chosen to become anybody, really — she decided to transform herself into a sort of person that society had conditioned her into believing is superior. Neve, when we meet her next, is a successful professional who goes to classy garden parties, and lives blissfully with her husband and two children in a fancy part of town. “You’re practically one of us,” her snooty friend tells her over lunch one afternoon, instantly reminding her, and us, of where she came from.

Not that anybody around her, including her new family, knows anything about her past. Racism is so deeply ingrained in Neve that she covers up her natural curls with a wig of straight hair that she wears at all times. She refuses to take it off even at home, as if her Blackness is a crime waiting to be discovered. Her mannerisms are refined to the point of pantomime, and her accent has lost all trace of the past. Neve’s new identity isn’t so much a manifestation of her aspirations as an elaborately crafted disguise.

But things begin to spiral out of control when two strangers begin showing up at random times in Neve’s life, and begin to methodically pull at the seams of her perfectly crafted fake existence. Literally haunted by the past, Neve’s paranoia goes unaddressed, until one pivotal moment in which she basically turns into a desi parent and smacks her son with a shoe for staying out late. If this was a Bollywood movie, it would take at least one more scene for her family to realise that something is wrong. But trauma takes different forms for us all; what is considered normal in one culture might be abhorred in another.

Neve’s husband recoils in shock at the sight of her pummelling their son, which is when he begins to recognise that something is seriously wrong with her. It is suggested, strongly, that Neve has never really been able to connect with her children, seeing in their mixed-race appearances hints of the past that she has worked so hard to bury. Her children, like most people that belong to the more progressive younger generation, are interested in exploring their roots. “We’re Black,” her son says at the dinner table, and Neve reacts as if she’s been slapped across the face.

Debutant director Nathaniel Martello-White displays a strong grasp over tone, as he ratchets up the tension with a minimalist approach. The Strays won’t be for fans of the more in-your-face sort of horror cinema popularised in recent years by James Wan’s successful movies. Martello-White separates his narrative into three Rashomon-style chapters; the first is presented from Neve’s point of view, the second from the perspective of her two stalkers, and the third through the lens of her buried former identity. Try as hard as she might, the truth, the movie suggests, will always bubble up to the surface.

Despite the skill on display in The Strays, there is, however, a strong perspective problem here. More than once, you wonder why Neve is the protagonist of the story and not the two strangers. In fact, presenting them — the only two overtly Black characters in sight — as the violent ‘villains’, especially when the movie itself wants us to believe that they’re the ones who’ve been wronged, is dicey optics at best, and self-defeating at worst. The Strays often wanders into some potentially dramatic territory, but leaves before sniffing under every rock.

The Strays is a must-watch Netflix thriller with an unforgettable finale

Back in August, homegrown thriller I Came By kept Netflix viewers gripped with its dark and timely tale of the haves and have-nots. It marked an auspicious start to Netflix's new crop of UK movies, and The Strays delivers on that promise.

The feature directorial debut of Nathaniel Martello-White (who you might recognise from I Hate Suzie) sees him take a tale he heard about a biracial mother who left her children behind to start a new life, spinning it out to feature-length and taking it to horrifying extremes.

Here, the mother is Neve (Ashley Madekwe) who is living a seemingly perfect life in the suburbs with her husband and two children. She's the deputy head at the local private school and is planning a charity gala, as you do. But her carefully-manufactured life is about to come crashing down.

When Neve starts to suspect that two shadowy figures (Jorden Myrie and Bukky Bakray) are stalking her, the truth starts to come out and Neve's life is changed forever. She might be having the worst time, but you'll be gripped right through to the unforgettable climax.

In the same way that the story never pans out as conventionally as you'd expect, Martello-White structures The Strays with four distinct segments that play with the timeline, the protagonist and even tone.

The first section 'Neve' plays out like a horror with Neve stalked by figures just out of her view, but are they really there? Lazy comparisons would say it has a Get Out vibe, but while it has the similarity of exploring something off in the suburbs, The Strays focuses more on themes of code-switching and colourism, among others.

In much the same way as Barbarian did last year, the section ends with an explosive revelation and before we have time to settle on that, the movie switches gear to a more coming-of-age feel in the second section. It's here where you realise the game the movie is playing on you: you think you know what you should feel, but you don't.

Martello-White's script delivers a nuanced and layered leading trio of characters and offers no easy answers. Your allegiances will switch throughout and by the end, you still won't know who is in the right – if anybody is. Combined with the storytelling shifts, the movie relishes leaving you feeling off-kilter and totally absorbed as a result.

That The Strays works as effectively as it does is also down to the excellent performances at its heart. Ashley Madekwe subtly conveys the struggles behind Neve's perfect suburban façade, while Jorden Myrie and Bukky Bakray effortlessly switch from endearing to terrifying and back again within a single scene.

When everybody is brought together for the astonishing final act, the movie ramps up the tension to almost unbearable levels. We won't go into spoilers here, but if you thought your family games of Scrabble were fraught affairs, think again. It's a fittingly unpredictable climax that's capped with a dark flourish.

For some, The Strays might end a bit too abruptly and its supporting cast isn't fleshed out as its leading trio. However, when it delivers the thrills as it does and leaves you with plenty to chew over, you'll likely be in a place to forgive those slight flaws.

You might not want them in your life, but you won't regret inviting The Strays into your Netflix list.

Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Strays' on Netflix, a Psych-Thriller Tackling Race and Cultural Assimilation

The Strays (now on Netflix) is from filmmaker Nathaniel Martello-White, a first-time director whose Jordan Peele appreciation shows like a slip sneaking out the bottom of a skirt. The film is an eerie-toned psychological thriller aiming for social commentary about race and cultural assimilation, conveyed via the story of an affluent woman, played by Ashley Madekwe, who never, ever, ever speaks about her past, which is precisely the type of scenario ripe to be upended by a plot device or a long-lost character (which may be one and the same). Whether The Strays has something to say about vital issues of the day remains to be seen, but one thing that’s certain is, this affluent woman Got Out but ended up very deep into something else entirely.  

The Gist: Sssstrrressssssss. It’s bearing down on Cheryl (Madekwe). She sits in her project-like housing-development apartment, just feeling it. The people at the housing office treat her like shit, the bills are piling up and it’s all too much for her right now. Her cell phone rings and she doesn’t answer it and then the landline rings and she doesn’t answer that either. She puts a note on the fridge that she’s going to the hairdresser and heads out the door. YEARS LATER reads a title card overtop an establishing shot of a spacious and luxurious modern home in an idyllic suburban setting. That’s where Cheryl lives, except she’s Neve now. It seems she didn’t go to the hairdresser. 

Neve, we absolutely must note, is a Black woman with light-ish skin. We see her brushing on makeup to make it a subtle shade lighter. She pops a prescription pill, which isn’t a big deal at all, lots of people take prescription pills every day, but this is a movie and it makes a point of the shake from the bottle and the – glunk – swallow. She looks in the mirror and practices speaking in an artificial, affected tone that’s best described as Haughty British. She wears stylish little leather driving gloves and big sunglasses and pearls as she gets in her Range Rover, and there’s something… is robotic the right word to describe her? Robotic, or Stepford, maybe? She’s out for tea with an associate and sees a man in a red cap (Jorden Myrie) in the background, and she’s unsettled. She’s driving home and sees the same man in the rearview, and, distracted, accidentally hits another car. Is she really seeing him or is he a hallucination? He seems to appear and disappear so quickly. So we wonder.

Neve is married to a nice enough Caucasian fellow, Ian (Justin Salinger), and they have two teenagers, Sebastian (Samuel Small) and Mary (Maria Almeida). Their home is immaculate. Expensive, no doubt. Notably, she has sex with Ian before she removes the wig covering her natural hair. She has three hairpieces, and they seem to make her quite itchy lately. One morning she gives the kids a ride to their gated, gold-striped-tie ultra-hoity private school, where she works as deputy headmistress. The new custodian there – is he that same guy, the guy in the red cap? She sees Sebastian being friendly with him and nearly flips her wig, scratch scratch. She seems to be developing quite a (scratch scratch scratch) (damn wig) tic. Mary, meanwhile, also makes a new friend (Bukky Bakray), and now both of Neve’s children are off doing whatever until late, which is out of character for her perfect, manicured offspring. Neve responds by walloping poor Sebastian with a shoe. The day of Neve’s big backyard fundraiser gathering, she’s speeching away when she spots the red cap man alongside Mary’s friend and we wonder if they’re really there or if she’s seeing things. And here is when it really hits the fan. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The outsider-almost-fitting-in-an-immaculate-highbrow-setting gives off I Am Love vibes. Passing addressed similar Black-woman-in-White-culture situations. I already made a Stepford Wives reference. But Get Out is a major touchstone here – maybe a bit too major.

Performance Worth Watching:  Bakray – a BAFTA winner for 2019 indie drama Rocks – avoids some of the histrionics of some of her castmates, and gives the type of dynamic supporting performance that might win her some star-on-the-rise accolades. 

Memorable Dialogue: “Are you ready for the next level?” – Red cap guy drops an ominous one

Sex and Skin: The sex in the sex scene all occurs below the frame.

Our Take: Ominous. It’s a key vibe here. Also portentous and foreboding. You know, like something’s going to break. It’s either Cheryl/Neve’s sanity, or a flimsy secret about to be traumatically Humpty-Dumptied – a secret hinted at in the film’s opening sequence. After the first act, my money was on both, and after the final act, I realized I should’ve put my chips on insanity. That’s not a spoiler; Neve clearly is the reinvention of Cheryl, a new self crafted so she can fit into a society defined by its creature comforts and air of prestige. In that opening sequence, she asks if it’s wrong to want more, and now that she’s got more, what does it mean, what did she have to do to attain it, and was it worth the effort and apparent sacrifice?

A compelling question, for sure, but I’m afraid I’m implying that The Strays is more provocative and fascinating than it really is. Martello-White’s intent and ambition is notable, but his hand is heavy. He amps up the ominousness with a cliched musical score, stalker-in-the-periphery visual cat-and-mouse games, and the usual gaslighting of the protagonist. His screenplay is structured so it doubles back to show familiar scenes from different points-of-view, which is inspired, and he maintains tonal consistency, which is half of a filmmaker’s battle. 

But that tone is off. The film almost timidly skirts the edge of satire, as if it wants to slash racial tropes and dynamics to ribbons, but didn’t sharpen its claws enough. It’s not as funny or unsettling as it needs to be, with a predictable end-of-act-one twist and a conclusion that’s surprising in its logic, but isn’t precluded by the nerve-wracking buildup of suspense it needs to pack a serious wallop. There’s too much hinting at ideas about privilege and barely subcutaneous racism, but not enough diligent cultivation of the subtext. It’s a stylish film, but one that’s ultimately too shallow and familiar to be truly effective.

Our Call: SKIP IT. It’s hard not to admire Martello-White’s ambition, but The Strays feels too much like Peele Lite.

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