Tyler Perry’s Straw Review: When Help Is a Joke and Hope Is a Setup

Tyler Perry’s Straw Review: When Help Is a Joke and Hope Is a Setup

There’s no gunshot, no chase, no secret villain. Netflix's Straw opens with a mother and a bank—and from there, it spirals into something far uglier than fiction. This isn’t a thriller dressed up as a message; it’s a message wearing the skin of a thriller. In this review of Netflix's Straw, we unpack a film that doesn’t just depict systemic collapse—it lives inside it. Taraji P. Henson’s Janiyah isn’t unraveling. She’s being unraveled, thread by thread, by a world built to watch her fall. If you're expecting comfort, predictability, or closure—look elsewhere. This film is a trapdoor, and the review is your flashlight.

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Tyler Perry’s Straw asks what happens when there’s no one left to help—Review

Welcome to the pressure cooker: setting up the world of Straw

A bank visit gone nuclear: the inciting disaster

Janiyah Wiltkinson walks into the bank like anyone trying to keep life stitched together with bad thread. The audience knows she’s desperate—she’s juggling multiple jobs, drowning in medical bills, and limping through a city that doesn’t notice she’s collapsing. But what makes the sequence sting is that she doesn’t know she’s walking into a minefield. That moment, that blind optimism, is where Tyler Perry’s Straw punches hardest.

The setup is stripped of theatrics. No dramatic music, no slow-motion dread. Just fluorescent lighting, bureaucratic delay, and the silent weight of everything she’s carrying. The plot of Straw pivots entirely on this ordinary scene. The cruelty is in its banality—a woman trying to cash a check becomes a threat to public safety because the system can’t distinguish struggle from crime.

When reality shifts on a dime

What turns a routine bank errand into an accusation of robbery? The script doesn’t scream the answer; it lets it unravel through gestures—hesitant glances from a teller, a phone call placed a beat too early, Janiyah’s tightening jaw. By the time the police are involved, the story has already shifted from human drama into Kafkaesque territory, and nobody told the protagonist.

The brilliance of this scene isn’t in its plot twist—it’s in its tonal pivot. One minute you’re rooting for a woman getting her financial lifeline; the next, you’re watching that lifeline knot itself into a noose. When you break down the plot of Straw, this is the hinge on which everything swings. It doesn’t build tension traditionally—it lets systems, not villains, do the dirty work.

Breaking points and metaphors: the script’s thematic powder keg

System overload by design

Let’s make one thing clear: Straw doesn’t believe in subtlety. Perry doesn’t layer stress onto Janiyah—he dumps it. One child’s chronic illness. One paycheck stretched beyond recognition. Landlords with no mercy. Healthcare providers with no answers. Employers with no empathy. This is the anatomy of collapse, curated with intent. And that intent is loud.

You don’t need a decoder ring to grasp the metaphor behind the film’s title. This isn’t a delicate exploration of adversity—it’s a pressure cooker with the lid welded shut. Any review of Straw doesn’t have to stretch to see the symbolism: every act of survival becomes ammunition for someone else’s suspicion. Every attempt at progress sets off another setback.

Rage, wrapped in realism

What Perry aims for here is thematic combustion. The film treats every bureaucratic delay and institutional shrug as another flammable detail. It doesn’t ask, “What if the system failed a person like Janiyah?” It starts from the premise that it already has. In that context, the title explains itself through accumulation.

This isn’t just screenwriting by escalation; it’s screenwriting by suffocation. And while some may argue it veers into melodrama, there’s a real argument that the extremity is the point. The film trades character nuance for emotional velocity—and while that’s not elegant, it is deliberate. For a film delivering such pointed social commentary, elegance was never the goal. Impact was.

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Realism or melodrama? Perry’s gamble with grit

Minimalism with a megaphone

Netflix’s Straw tries to have it both ways: a stripped-down production shot in four days, with performances meant to feel lived-in, surrounded by a script that’s aggressively message-driven. Perry positions this as his most socially urgent work, but the delivery is anything but restrained. The tension lies in this contradiction—quiet visual framing crashing into loud thematic signals.

This Tyler Perry social drama on Netflix straddles two worlds: the polished artifice of his more commercial projects, and a newer, rawer storytelling that wants to hit a nerve. Sometimes it succeeds—especially when the camera lingers on Henson’s face instead of her dialogue. But at other points, it drags its message into the room with a megaphone and dares the viewer not to flinch.

Truth in tone, not in detail

Here’s the thing: realism in Straw doesn’t mean documentary accuracy. It means emotional plausibility. That’s where Perry gambles—and sometimes loses. The events onscreen may stretch believability, but the emotions behind them stay grounded. The anxiety, the hopelessness, the grinding fear of being misunderstood or discarded—those hit.

Still, there are tonal whiplashes. A few exchanges verge on courtroom-drama corniness. A key reveal late in the film strains logic. But the emotional core remains intact. For a Tyler Perry project like Straw, that’s evolution. It’s messy evolution, sure. But it’s not nothing. In fact, it’s something close to ambition—messy, angry, sometimes misguided ambition. And that’s far more interesting than playing it safe.

Tyler Perry’s STRAW | Official Trailer

Performances under pressure: cast, characters, and chemistry

Taraji P. Henson as Janiyah: the heart, the grit, the meltdown

Taraji P. Henson walks a razor’s edge in Tyler Perry’s Straw, and she does it without flinching. Her portrayal of Janiyah isn’t theatrical—it’s choked down, clenched, and held together with every ounce of will a person can muster before the walls cave in. The performance isn’t about tears or shouting matches. It’s about tight smiles when she’s cornered, the flick of her eyes when authority dismisses her, the long silences where dignity sits beside desperation.

In terms of emotional realism, Henson delivers the goods. What stands out most when reviewing Henson’s performance in Straw is how much she doesn’t do. She’s not playing a victim. She’s not reaching for the audience’s pity. She’s portraying someone who has no time to fall apart because falling apart doesn’t feed a sick child or cover rent.

Desperation without distortion

Where some actors might push too hard—especially in a film wired for moral panic—Henson plays it inward. There’s steel in her performance that never turns cold. In fact, it’s that internal furnace that carries the film. Janiyah is a woman constantly calculating risk, biting down her fear, and moving forward because backward isn’t an option. That character arc doesn’t scream for attention; it simmers until it explodes.

This is the center of the character study at the heart of Straw. Perry may build the world around her, but Henson is the film’s gravitational pull. Even when the plot veers into implausible territory, her performance grounds it. If Straw hits anywhere emotionally, it’s because Henson refuses to blink when the story dares her to collapse. That kind of focus doesn’t just elevate a scene—it anchors any review of Straw in something human.

STRAW - Netflix

Friends, foes, and family: the ensemble’s roles

Nicole, the friend you’d call at 2 a.m.

Sherri Shepherd’s Nicole could’ve easily fallen into trope territory—the overworked best friend-slash-legal-aid-slash-emotional-dumpster. But she doesn’t. Shepherd brings a grounded calm to the chaos, letting Nicole be smart, tired, and quietly fierce. She doesn’t steal scenes; she stitches them together. When Janiyah is on the verge, Nicole isn’t just a sounding board—she’s the last reasonable voice left in a narrative that’s unraveling.

Shepherd’s presence is a subtle flex. There’s warmth, yes, but there’s also a kind of unspoken anger bubbling underneath. In terms of Straw‘s supporting cast, Nicole serves as both moral compass and emotional lifeline—and without dragging the story into sentimentality.

Detective Raymond and Uncle Richard: skepticism and history

Teyana Taylor’s Detective Raymond brings something rarer than edge: ambiguity. She’s suspicious, but not cartoonishly hostile. There’s a backstory you don’t get, a reason for her wary professionalism. Taylor doesn’t over-explain it. She plays Raymond like someone used to picking through lies, and not entirely convinced the truth matters anymore. The result? A character whose tension with Janiyah isn’t just procedural—it’s philosophical.

Then there’s Glynn Turman’s Uncle Richard. He walks in carrying generational weight, the kind of presence that says, “I’ve seen worse and survived it.” But his distance from Janiyah is part of the point. He’s not here to fix things. He’s here to remind us how many times this cycle has spun.

Together, these performances enrich the supporting characters in Straw by adding contrast. They give Janiyah resistance, not relief—and that makes the ensemble feel real. No one here exists to save her. They show up, they push back, and they reveal exactly how isolated survival can be.

Four days of mayhem: how the fast shoot shaped the acting

Filming an emotionally dense movie in four days should’ve been a recipe for disaster—or at least a parade of half-baked performances. But here’s the surprise: the schedule doesn’t hurt the acting. It tightens it. The rawness that seeps into every exchange isn’t just acting—it’s urgency baked into the shoot. Nobody had time to rehearse emotion to death. That lack of polish gives certain scenes their bite.

The acting in Straw feels immediate. Not messy, not improvised—but sharp in a way that suggests everyone involved knew they were on a clock and had to bleed fast. That kind of compressed pressure often exposes weak links. In Straw, it seems to have forced focus.

Chemistry on the edge

There’s a slightly frantic rhythm to the way characters interact—especially in scenes between Janiyah and Nicole. But that friction works. You can feel the actors meeting each other mid-sentence, picking up cues from body language instead of memorized beats. And in scenes of confrontation—particularly between Janiyah and Detective Raymond—the unfiltered energy lands.

This is where the four-day sprint shows its upside. Chemistry didn’t have time to be manufactured. It had to be real, or it wouldn’t register. The result: an ensemble that moves like people under pressure, not like actors hitting marks. For a film with such a brutal tempo, that’s not a glitch—it’s a match.

If there’s anything to take from how the four-day shoot affected Straw, it’s that speed didn’t sabotage the performances. It weaponized them. The acting doesn’t feel rehearsed. It feels lived-in, and for a story about barely keeping it together, that’s exactly the texture it needed.

Anatomy of a crisis: plot, structure, and narrative gaps

The domino effect: plotting Janiyah’s spiral, step by step

Tyler Perry’s Straw wastes no time. Janiyah doesn’t gradually fall into crisis—she’s already there, juggling part-time jobs and caregiving while trying to stay afloat. The first act doesn’t build suspense in the traditional sense. It stacks realities. And fast.

Medical debt sets the tone. Her daughter needs urgent care. Insurance isn’t a lifeline—it’s another wall. That first denial sets off a chain reaction. Rent hikes follow. Transportation breaks down. Every time she thinks she’s solved one crisis, another one stomps in.

The plot of Straw unfolds like a bureaucratic nightmare—each scene a door that leads to another locked hallway. What Perry does here, intentionally or not, is create a rhythm of escalation that’s less “plot twist” and more procedural collapse. It’s a structural march toward desperation.

The plot escalates, the options evaporate

Once the check enters the picture, the film locks into its next gear. It isn’t a solution—it’s a time bomb. The film’s storyline hinges on Janiyah trying to do one thing right: get the money, save her daughter. That’s when the system snaps.

The cause-and-effect mechanics are unmistakable. Cashing a check leads to suspicion. Suspicion leads to detainment. Detainment leads to charges. What’s missing isn’t logic—it’s grace. Perry isn’t subtle, but he is methodical. Each scene makes Janiyah’s situation slightly worse, not through mistakes, but through policies, reactions, and protocols. It’s a textbook analysis of systemic failure in Straw—and it’s written like a warning, not a tragedy.

Relentless or rushed? The viewer’s pacing experience

Watching Straw feels like being thrown down a hill in a shopping cart. The energy is there. The velocity is undeniable. But does it steer? That’s debatable.

The first half is intentionally breathless—escalation after escalation with barely a moment for the characters to breathe, let alone the viewer. This isn’t pacing designed to build suspense; it’s pacing designed to simulate claustrophobia. The pressure-cooker effect is real, but it often substitutes noise for nuance.

This raises a problem with Straw‘s narrative structure: when everything is urgent, nothing is. Without valleys between the peaks, the film doesn’t build tension—it flattens it. That’s where the narrative can feel rushed, even when it’s technically hitting all the right story beats.

Emotional investment vs. narrative fatigue

The breakneck pacing doesn’t just affect suspense—it affects character development. We don’t get enough time to sit with Janiyah’s decisions. Moments that should feel like heartbreak register as plot transitions. That’s the cost of compression.

It’s not that the story lacks content—it’s that the structure races past the emotional toll. Viewers trying to connect might find themselves left behind by the next crisis before they’ve processed the last. That’s the tradeoff Perry makes with his tempo: constant intensity, reduced depth. The pacing issues in Netflix’s Straw stem from that imbalance. Urgency, when overplayed, becomes noise. And noise drowns meaning.

The bank fallout: dissecting confusion, consequences, and causality

The misfire that defines the movie

Let’s unpack the core miscommunication—because the bank scene isn’t just a turning point, it’s the catalyst for the entire third act. Janiyah arrives with a legitimate check, processed through a system that clearly isn’t equipped to trust people like her. What follows is a procedural spiral masquerading as a security protocol.

Here’s the sequence: the teller flags the check as suspicious. No confrontation, no overt aggression. Just protocol. The manager steps in. Calls are made—quietly. Janiyah is kept waiting. The police arrive. By the time she realizes what’s happening, she’s been repositioned from customer to suspect.

The film doesn’t make this ambiguous in intent, but it does in execution. This is where understanding Straw becomes necessary—because many viewers will walk away wondering, “Why did this even happen?” The answer is simple: the system saw her stress and labeled it threat.

When misunderstanding becomes indictment

The brilliance—or bleakness—of this scene is how plausible it feels. No dramatic overreach. No gun drawn. Just a steady erosion of agency. The moment the narrative flips, Janiyah’s intentions become irrelevant. Her innocence doesn’t matter. Her desperation becomes evidence.

That’s what makes this sequence so vital in Straw‘s plot. It transforms the film from social drama into institutional critique. The bank isn’t just a setting—it’s a character. It’s the silent partner in the indictment. And the fallout from this moment stretches across every subsequent scene.

Explaining the bank scene in Straw reveals that the turning point wasn’t a robbery, a lie, or a betrayal. It was paperwork, bias, and silence. That’s what Perry weaponizes. Not the twist—but the indifference that made it possible.

Social commentary or social sledgehammer?

Institutions on empty: the broader lens on social systems

What Netflix’s Straw does better than most social thrillers is refuse to offer institutional stability as a given. Janiyah isn’t just failed by a bank—she’s failed by every system before she ever enters it. Healthcare is portrayed not as broken, but as deliberately indifferent. The film treats medical access like a luxury item: unaffordable, obstructive, and painfully transactional.

That’s the foundation of the film’s social commentary—institutions that appear to function but are built to repel the people who need them most. Housing? It’s just another ticking clock. Employment? An unsustainable grind. There’s no appeal process, no recourse. Only the next hurdle. Janiyah’s world doesn’t fall apart. It was never assembled to hold her.

The machinery of indifference

Where Perry succeeds is showing how these systemic failures don’t need to scream to be dangerous. They just quietly don’t work. The bureaucracy isn’t malevolent. It’s vacant. And that vacancy is lethal. A missing form, an ignored call, an unexplained delay—these are the real antagonists.

The strength of any Netflix review of Straw lies in its refusal to paint villainy in human form. It’s structural. It’s impersonal. And it’s everywhere. The film’s world-building, when stripped of dramatic embellishments, doubles as a bleak explanation of Straw’s systemic bias themes. What some call drama, others call Tuesday.

Justice as a rigged game: policing, bias, and suspicion

If the institutions in Straw are quietly complicit, the justice system is loud, unbending, and strategically blind. Teyana Taylor’s Detective Raymond isn’t cartoonishly corrupt—she’s institutionally conditioned. She sees what the system taught her to see: threat, not context. Her interactions with Janiyah aren’t driven by hostility but by deeply internalized suspicion.

The film’s depiction of policing echoes a pattern familiar in real-world coverage but rarely dramatized with this much restraint. There’s no ranting, no grand gestures. Just paperwork, posture, and decisions that make no room for nuance. Within Straw‘s plot, Janiyah’s guilt is assumed long before evidence enters the room.

Institutional paranoia as standard protocol

Straw doesn’t pretend this is new. It positions bias as protocol—an algorithm of assumptions based on race, desperation, and visible anxiety. Detective Raymond isn’t the outlier; she’s the blueprint. Perry builds her character to represent how justice processes Black women: with skepticism first, facts later (if at all).

This forms the spine of how Straw analyzes police bias. The justice system here doesn’t break. It performs exactly as designed. That’s the film’s most disturbing point—and one of its most effectively communicated.

Metaphors and messaging: when the film shouts

Tyler Perry’s approach in Straw isn’t about nuance. It’s about impact. That’s not always a problem—until it becomes the problem. Every theme arrives with flashing lights: the “last straw” metaphor, the breakdown of social safety nets, the weaponization of bureaucracy. Nothing is allowed to speak for itself because everything is already mid-monologue.

Any review of Straw has to grapple with this: the metaphors aren’t just layered—they’re underlined, italicized, and projected on a jumbotron. Janiyah’s descent isn’t just difficult—it’s narrated by the script’s constant need to explain why we should be outraged. And while the outrage is earned, the messaging sometimes trips over itself trying to make sure we’re paying attention.

When message drowns momentum

Perry’s storytelling instinct is to make sure nothing goes unnoticed. But that instinct occasionally undercuts the film’s pacing, replacing tension with lecture. The drama doesn’t unfold—it gets narrated in bold font. This can exhaust the viewer’s emotional bandwidth before the climax even lands.

Still, for all its blunt-force delivery, the film’s messaging is coherent. It may be loud, but it’s consistent. That makes critiquing Straw‘s social message less about content and more about calibration. Perry knows what he wants to say. He just says it with a megaphone strapped to a bullhorn.

Behind the curtain: craft, production, and soundtrack

Speed as strategy: the four-day shoot’s artistic consequences

Let’s address the elephant—or maybe the stopwatch—in the room: Straw was filmed in four days. That’s either an impressive flex or a logistical gamble depending on where you sit. But from a technical standpoint, the most striking result is how economically the film is staged. Blocking is simple. Shots are utilitarian. There’s no fat in the frame.

This economy gives Straw a sort of brittle urgency. Tyler Perry’s direction doesn’t aim for visual flourish—it aims for containment. That works for a story about institutional suffocation, even if it limits the film’s stylistic range. As a Tyler Perry project, Straw is more focused than flashy.

Editing that matches the momentum

The editing, like the direction, is brisk to the point of surgical. Transitions are clean, occasionally abrupt, and designed to maintain forward motion. That’s a choice, not an accident. It mirrors the panic of Janiyah’s unraveling timeline.

Analyzing Straw‘s production isn’t about whether the film looks expensive—it doesn’t. It’s about whether the choices made under pressure align with the story’s urgency. And on that front, the answer is yes, if not always elegantly.

Atlanta on display: visual world-building and set design

Shot entirely at Tyler Perry Studios, Straw makes deliberate use of its urban backdrops. The settings aren’t sweeping or scenic—they’re functional. Apartments feel small. Hospitals feel sterile. The bank feels like a bureaucratic black hole. That claustrophobic minimalism is baked into every environment.

This isn’t accidental. The film’s design logic follows its emotional tone. Spaces are tight, impersonal, and loaded with stress. Visually, this contributes to a believable sense of modern struggle, and it does so without drawing attention to itself.

There’s no effort to glamorize or aestheticize Atlanta. It’s not a character here—it’s a backdrop that holds no comfort. And in a film about systemic failure, that’s a smart call. Reviewing how Straw was filmed in Atlanta shows that the set design reinforces the story’s emotional claustrophobia rather than distracting from it.

Straw doesn’t try to seduce the viewer with visual beauty. It uses its space to trap its characters—and that’s exactly what the story demands.

Sound and fury: music, score, and cultural texture

Dara Taylor’s score doesn’t dominate the film—but it’s always lurking. There’s a low, pulsing quality to the music that reinforces the film’s pressure-cooker energy. It’s not meant to soar. It’s meant to simmer. That tension supports the scenes without hijacking them.

The music serves as a subtle accelerant. It’s there to guide, not to manipulate. That kind of restraint is rare in a film so eager to shout its themes. Here, the score earns points for not joining the chorus.

Then there’s GloRilla’s “Let Her Cook.” It lands late, but loud. The placement is calculated—this isn’t casual background noise. It’s cultural punctuation. In a film where so much is explained through systemic critique, the needle drop feels like a release. Not hopeful, not triumphant—just assertive.

Analyzing Straw‘s soundtrack lands on this: the sound design doesn’t try to save the story. It supports it. And that may be the smartest production decision in the whole film. Let the characters crumble. Let the score underscore it—quietly, until it doesn’t.

Endgame: the ending and its (dis)contents

The final act: structure, surprise, and payoff

The last act of Netflix’s Straw doesn’t twist—it pivots. The climactic moment hinges less on revelation than inevitability. After a steady build-up of institutional betrayal, the story reaches a boiling point that feels less like a plot twist and more like narrative gravity doing its job. Structurally, it’s consistent. But that doesn’t mean it satisfies.

This is where Straw tries to tie its plot threads, but instead of delivering catharsis, it opts for confrontation. Janiyah’s fate is decided in a setting that mirrors the rest of the film—procedural, emotionally flat, and utterly indifferent. Whether that’s a creative choice or a missed opportunity depends on your appetite for ambiguity.

Resolution or resignation?

From a mechanical standpoint, the climax is tidy enough. Loose ends are addressed, consequences are acknowledged, and the narrative doesn’t wander. But it’s the absence of emotional closure that leaves a mark. If you’re looking for payoff in the traditional sense—vindication, redemption, some dramatic punctuation—you won’t find it here.

And maybe that’s the point. When you examine how Straw’s ending works structurally, you see a story that closes the loop while deliberately withholding satisfaction. The film ends not with triumph or tragedy but with exhausted stillness. That’s bold. Whether it’s effective is another question.

How you interpret Straw’s ending will likely land somewhere between daring and deflating. The structure holds, but the resolution doesn’t land with weight—it dissipates.

Aftermath and meaning: making sense of the finale

The meaning in what’s missing

Let’s be clear: Straw isn’t trying to trick you with its ending. It’s trying to leave you uncomfortable. The systems Janiyah faces don’t collapse. They keep grinding. The message is that resolution, in her world, is a luxury she can’t afford. The film’s conclusion doesn’t suggest progress. It underlines permanence.

Viewed this way, what Straw’s ending means isn’t about what happens—it’s about what doesn’t. No apologies, no dramatic reversals, no feel-good pivot. The story ends with the same systemic indifference it began with. That’s a thematic mic drop, not a narrative one.

 Emotional ambiguity as statement

What Perry aims for here is realism over relief. And while it aligns with the film’s overall tone, it’s a gamble. Some viewers may walk away wondering what the point was. Others will feel the cumulative weight of everything that’s happened—and recognize that the lack of closure is the commentary.

Within this context, Straw signals its intent clearly. Janiyah doesn’t “win.” She survives. The ending doesn’t offer answers. It demands reflection. That’s a tough sell narratively, but thematically, it lands like a gut punch. And that’s the version of closure Straw is willing to give.

Bright spots: what Straw gets right

Performance under pressure

The standout, unquestionably, is Taraji P. Henson. Her portrayal of Janiyah holds the entire film together, giving it emotional weight where the script sometimes leans too hard on structure. Henson navigates grief, fear, and restraint with a subtlety that never asks for sympathy—it demands recognition.

The supporting cast also steps up. Sherri Shepherd delivers low-key gravity without slipping into caricature. Teyana Taylor gives the detective role enough ambiguity to feel real. The ensemble doesn’t oversell—they ground the chaos.

These performances are central to understanding what works in Straw. Without them, the social message would collapse under its own repetition.

Atmosphere, tension, and thematic conviction

Where Straw truly succeeds is in tone. The atmosphere is consistently suffocating—intentionally so. The film doesn’t flirt with its themes. It charges headfirst into them. The commitment to portraying systemic failure without gloss is relentless.

This is where Straw earns credit: it never dilutes its point. It might not always deliver it artfully, but it never pulls back. That kind of conviction is rare, and when it works, it stings in all the right places.

Where Straw trips: weaknesses and missed opportunities

Let’s start with the pacing. Once the film hits its midpoint, it becomes narratively rigid. Everything is geared toward reinforcing the thesis. That’s noble, but it’s also limiting. Characters begin to serve arguments more than arcs. Moments that should unfold are instead delivered with the subtlety of a closing statement.

This is where my assessment of Straw starts to wobble. Not because the story lacks substance, but because it refuses to modulate tone or tempo. The film exhausts its urgency without replenishing it with emotional evolution.

Overwritten metaphors, underdeveloped arcs

The metaphors—especially the title—are so obvious they almost self-sabotage. Every reference to “breaking points” feels telegraphed. And while that might be Perry’s point, it makes certain scenes feel less like storytelling and more like staging for a panel discussion.

More frustratingly, some character arcs feel truncated. We get just enough backstory to sense complexity, then we move on. That’s not just a narrative misstep—it’s a missed opportunity to humanize the themes Perry is so desperate to highlight. This imbalance defines much of what doesn’t work in Straw.

Tyler Perry’s Straw Review

Review by Ines Murtić

6/10

Final Verdict

Not an easy watch, but a pointed one

Straw isn’t for everyone. It’s grim, blunt, and unrelenting in its focus. It doesn’t aim to entertain. It aims to indict. And depending on what you bring to it, you’ll either find it painfully resonant or emotionally inaccessible.

For those willing to wade through the discomfort, it offers something rare: a film that knows exactly what it wants to say and says it without apology. But that clarity comes at the cost of subtlety, nuance, and—at times—narrative satisfaction.

So if you’re wondering whether it’s worth your time, here’s the verdict: yes, but only if you’re ready to confront a story that never offers escape. My recommendation for Straw comes with that caveat—this isn’t entertainment. It’s excavation. And Perry, flaws and all, digs deep.

Where to Watch

NETFLIX

Release date: June 6, 2025

Genres: Drama, Thriller

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