Nathaniel Martello-White’s feature debut The Strays is a social thriller that lacks bite, discipline, and a third act. When the film abruptly ended, I waited for Ashton Kutcher to pop from behind my sofa to announce a film critic Punk’d spin-off, where they cut to a movie’s credits twenty minutes too early. It’s an incomplete experience that haphazardly comments on otherwise significant talking points about systemic racial divides and skin-color privileges. Martello-White writes from a place of feel-bad frustration, but all that appears is the mistranslation of biased classism vibes into a home invasion mold.
Ashley Madekwe leads as a complicated housewife everyone knows as Neve, a light-skinned Black woman who embraces wigs, makeup applications, and the comforts of white suburbia. She’s married to posh and proper caucasian husband Ian (Justin Salinger) — imagine a role Michael Sheen would play — and earns a glistening reputation as deputy head of a private school. Neve blends in with her pasty-faced neighbors, steering mixed-race children Mary (Maria Almeida) and Sebastian (Samuel Small) away from Black culture. Neve refuses to acknowledge her past and only lives in her picture-perfect present, on the verge of hosting her first charity gala — until the arrival of two supposed strangers sends Neve spiraling at the risk of exposing her past life.
The Strays is a densely complex character study that operates in frantic outbursts which requires a far more meticulous brand of execution. Neve shuns her Blackness because of rampant social issues upholding inequality, yet Martello-White’s third act offers no internal confrontation. The introduction of Marvin (Jorden Myrie) and Abigail (Bukky Bakray) is so emotionally weighted, only to abandon character development in favor of a third-act horror bend. A film built on obvious secrets divides itself into three acts, the first two of which — one about “Current Neve,” the second about Marvin and Abigail — are expositional to a sluggish fault. Martello-White wants to drive uncomfortable conversations about parenthood, abandonment, and how skin color influences both, yet neuters the entire experience by choosing the most crash-and-burn finale imaginable.
What attempts to follow in Jordan Peele’s genre footsteps wastes any searing commentary on what could be the most anti-climactic, poorly conceived ending in many years.
As a thriller, there’s no heat behind the film’s most threatening scenes. What starts psychologically with Neve building conspiracies in her head, or seeing Marvin’s figure like a ghost, is a short burst of discomfort in the first act. Neve’s subconscious scratching at her natural hair under straightened jet-black wigs provides a coarse dry sound but nothing further. Martello-White toys with haunted visions and break-in foreshadowing with minimal degrees of intensity in an attempt to hone on Neve’s house of cards tumbling down at the slightest gust. Then horrors become about an overflowing sink, personal home gym, and game of Scrabble — for as enraged The Strays can present itself, tension and danger are at subdued lows.
Madekwe doesn’t feel supported in her dominating performance, as the film wastes no time exposing her paranoia. The Strays features a limited understanding of pacing as there’s no steady build to Neve’s first climactic outburst as she confronts what she thought she escaped.
Martello-White’s screenplay has a few standout lines that break through the clouds, like when Neve equates her actions to the same committed by men without equal consequences. Neve’s behavioral commentary on “passing,” class mobility, and serving yourself over others provides a situation ripe for social investigation, but Martello-White’s third act tosses kerosene on expanding themes and dares the audience to figure it all out. Not like that hasn’t been done before or can’t be done — I’ve just never seen such a mangled mass of conflicting messages left behind like this in quite some time.
You’ll probably encounter few films that bail on their conceptual starting points as confidently as The Strays. Nathaniel Martello-White has his sights set on Britain’s experiential horrors regarding Black livelihoods versus white freedoms, only to wrap things up like flipping a Monopoly board with plenty of gameplay left. Count a few tantalizing character moments as Neve must reconcile the choices she’s made and those she’s shunned in the process, but don’t expect a graceful landing … or any landing for that matter. The Strays might come from a place of impossible angst about everything from assimilation to self-hatred, but concludes with all the grace of an Irish exit on St. Patrick’s Day in New York City.
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