Movie · 2025 · Thriller, Drama, Crime · 1h 45m · R · English
Curator score: 2.8/10 (196.8K ratings)
This is her last.
Overview
What will be her last straw? A devastatingly bad day pushes a hardworking single mother to the breaking point — and into a shocking act of desperation.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.8/10
IMDb: 6.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.25/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 53%
Metacritic: 56
TMDB: 7.7/10
Director
Tyler Perry
Production
Tyler Perry Studios
Cast
Taraji P. Henson, Sherri Shepherd, Teyana Taylor, Sinbad, Rockmond Dunbar, Ashley Versher, Mike Merrill, Glynn Turman, Shalèt Monique, Diva Tyler, Fracaswell Hyman, Derek Phillips, Tilky Jones, Katrina Nelson, Anthony E. Williams, Justin James Boykin, Jâms Thomas, Zac Zedalis, Niviere Fontane, Gabrielle E Jackson
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A tense, emotionally punishing pressure-cooker with a strong central performance and a premise built for catharsis, but it also leans hard into melodrama and blunt-force plotting. If you want a raw, high-stakes descent into one woman’s breaking point, it can be gripping; if you need subtlety or realism, it may frustrate you.
Best for
Viewers who like intense single-day thrillers
Fans of performance-driven drama
Audiences looking for a cathartic, emotionally charged crime story
People open to melodramatic, issue-forward filmmaking
Skip if
You prefer restrained, naturalistic storytelling
You’re sensitive to relentless misery and stress
You dislike heavy-handed social drama
You want a cleanly plotted thriller with subtle characterization
Overview
STRAW is built around a simple, brutal engine: one exhausted mother, one catastrophic day, and one world that keeps tightening the screws. The film’s appeal is immediate and easy to understand. It wants you to feel every missed paycheck, every humiliating setback, and every fresh indignity as a step toward collapse, and the lead performance does a lot of the heavy lifting in making that spiral feel urgent.
Worth noting
The movie plays like a melodrama with thriller mechanics, which is both its strength and its weakness. When it commits to the emotional reality of a woman pushed past endurance, it can be devastating. When it reaches for shock, coincidence, or broad supporting characters, it risks feeling schematic and overdetermined rather than lived-in.
Bottom line
For viewers who respond to raw emotion, righteous anger, and a story about desperation turning into action, this is likely to land. For others, the bluntness may read as manipulation. Either way, it is not a passive watch; it is designed to leave you rattled.
Top Letterboxd reviews
theo (3★) · 4315 likes
her day was almost as bad as leaving the house and forgetting your headphones
anisnanad (4★) · 3441 likes
“I WORK LIKE A DOG DAY AND NIGHT!” ahhh movie
mina_juu (3★) · 2822 likes
damn detective raymond was SO FINE
nonetheless this movie ripped me to shreds
abbyoncinema (2★) · 2474 likes
Tyler Perry seems to have developed a fetish for black struggle, specifically the suffering of black women, and it’s reached a near-satirical level in his latest film. We are witnessing poverty seen through the lens of a billionaire who is completely out of touch.
Perry does not trust the audience to understand Janiyah’s struggles. We are witnessing her drowning financially, emotionally, and mentally, but instead of allowing subtlety, Perry assaults us with cartoonish level day players assaulting our protagonist to… more Tyler Perry seems to have developed a fetish for black struggle, specifically the suffering of black women, and it’s reached a near-satirical level in his latest film. We are witnessing poverty seen through the lens of a billionaire who is completely out of touch.
Perry does not trust the audience to understand Janiyah’s struggles. We are witnessing her drowning financially, emotionally, and mentally, but instead of allowing subtlety, Perry assaults us with cartoonish level day players assaulting our protagonist to… more
1998 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 1m · R · Curator 8.0/10 (147.9K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Ordinary people making one bad choice after another as money pressure turns corrosive.