The Strays is based on an upper-middle-class black woman whose past comes back to haunt her. The horror-thriller is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
The film starts with Cheryl ranting about her life. Unsatisfied with where she is, Cheryl decides to just take her things and leave the house and her family.
Years later, she has changed her name to Neve and found the success and wealth that she desired.
Cheryl is the deputy headmistress of a school and is organising a gala. She has also tried her best to forget her black heritage and become ‘white’.
She lives with her husband, Ian, and two children, Mary and Sebastian. It’s all going smoothly until she starts getting stalked. In various instances, Neve notices a man following her and trying to talk to her son. But the figure suddenly disappears.
He’s later found working as a janitor in the school where she is the deputy headmistress. Despite her efforts, she isn’t able to shake him off.
Later, at her gala, the man shows up with a woman. Neve starts shouting at the two, asking them what kind of game they’re playing and who invited them. She is shocked when they call her ‘mother’.
Five days earlier, Carl and Dione, Neve’s children from her previous marriage, arrive in the city. Carl tells Dione that this is their family.
Carl befriends Sebastian, telling him that his name is Marvin. Dione does the same with Mary, telling her she is Abigail. Dione bursts out at Abigail as she is envious of the attention that she has gotten over the years from their mother.
When Sebastian tells Carl that their mother has mother doesn’t approve of anything ‘black’, he gets furious. He asks Sebastian to jump from the roof but stops at the last second.
Mary tells Dione about the gala and invites her. When the two show up, Neve shouts at them, which catches the viewers up with the present day.
Neve’s family is extremely surprised and disappointed that she hid such a huge part of her previous life from them. She suggests that they would have never accepted two black children.
The Strays ending explained in detail:
Does Neve accept Carl and Dione in her new life?
Knowing that she must address the situation, Neve meets Carl and Dione at an eatery and the three have a conversation.
Neve makes some feeble attempts to justify her actions, but Carl and Dione rebuff anything that she has to say. When she finally accepts the gravity of what she had done, they assume that she would want them as part of her life again.
When they ask if they will be moving to her new house, Neve is visibly awkward in her response and tries to avoid the suggestion.
Instead, she tries to buy them off with a cheque worth £20,000. She also veils this by saying she wants the two to stand on their own feet, when, in reality, she just wants to get rid of them.
Do Carl and Dione leave?
Neve tells her family that the two have left but leaves out the money part. They’re surprised that they left so easily, and question why she doesn’t even want to see them again.
On Dione’s birthday, she and Carl invade their home. They hold all of them hostage and order food. They reveal to her family that she tried to pay them off. But £20,000 doesn’t even begin to cover the kind of life they’ve experienced.
Neve’s family is forced to do whatever is asked of them. Carl takes Ian to the weights room and asks him to lift more than he can handle, while Dione sits with the two children at the table.
What is Neve’s fate at the end?
When the food arrives, Neve attends the door. Hearing Ian’s groans, the delivery executive asks if everything’s okay. She tells him to wait as she gets the money.
Ian is unable to handle the weight, which falls on him, cracks his bones and kills him. The sound reaches Sebastian and Mary, who realise they’ve lost their father.
Neve is overwhelmed by the situation and proceeds to get her purse from her room. When she returns, she apologises for how this has turned out and hopes they can forgive her one day.
In reality, this apology is for Sebastian and Mary, not Carl and Dione. With the facade of paying for the food, Neve escapes on a motorcycle.
All her children just stand and hear her escape. In the end, Neve did exactly what she did at the start of the film and what she does at any sign of duress: she left. She was willing to abandon her new family as well. The only person Neve cares about is herself.
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