As much as I love the internet at times, and have been positive about it here a few times recently, it also manages to occasionally depress me. Take The Strays, for example. It's a film that leads to an interesting, thought-provoking, ending. It's not ambiguous though. So it is disheartening to see a number of articles all appearing with headlines that claim to be helpful in explaining the ending. If you need the ending of The Strays explained then you aren't old enough to have watched the movie. I'm not being rude. The ending of the film is THAT unambiguous.
Let's begin at the beginning though. Ashley Madekwe plays a black woman we see leaving a bad situation. She has placed a note on the fridge door, an excuse buying her some time, and she's gone. Years later, Neve (the named that Madekwe's character is now using) seems to have a perfect life. She has a loving husband, Ian (Justin Salinger), a teenage son and daughter (played by Samuel Small and Maria Almeida, respectively), and a prime position of authority and respect in her community. It seems to come at a price, however, as Neve works hard to cover up aspects of her appearance that highlight her race, and she becomes more and more unnerved by people who seem to be very interested in observing her well-maintained "perfect" life.
The feature debut of writer-director Nathaniel Martello-White, The Strays is a fascinating and brilliant look at race, class, and unconscious bias. It's such a slow burn that viewers may not realise just how affecting it is until the very last scenes, but it's meticulously put together in a way that maximises the impact of that finale. There are a couple of obvious big movie touchstones, by directors as diverse as Douglas Sirk and Michael Haneke, but it does a great job of blending a couple of familiar central ideas into something that feels new and fresh. The commentary is clear throughout, but not in a way that gets in the way of the unfolding plot, which Martello-White presents in a non-chronological way to allow for some playfulness before things get darker and darker on the way to the end credits.
Madekwe is so good here that I'll definitely be looking forward to seeing her in other lead roles. I'm not familiar with anything else that she's done, as far as I'm aware, but she's quite flawless here. Salinger, Small, and Almeida are all very good, and all believably alarmed by the potential breakdown of Madekwe's character. Then there are the two characters played by Bukky Bakray and Jorden Myrie, perhaps "the strays" of the title, or perhaps the title means much more than that. Both Bakray and Myrie are effectively unnerving, and yet both get a chance to explain why they are acting the way they are acting, which makes them more interesting than the kind of mysterious strangers you could find in films with a similar third act to this one.
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone looking for easy entertainment. This isn't a standard thriller or chiller. It's a heady mix that creates tension from the constant nervousness and insecurity that viewers see being controlled (sometimes) by the main character. I'd also like to temper my praise with some criticism though, because The Strays is sometimes turned into a tougher viewing experience, a bit of an endurance test in places, than it needs to be. Everything is just right, technically, but there are one or two strands that are stretched close to breaking point, with the performances doing enough to compensate for Martello-White's misplaced idea of exactly how far he can/should push things.
Ultimately worth your time, and the ending (that ending that doesn't need explained) is good enough to underline and amplify everything that the film has said throughout the rest of runtime, The Strays is an impressively confident feature debut that marks out Martello-White as an intelligent and exciting new director to keep a very close eye on.
7/10
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