One day. One mother. One boundary too far.
“How much can a person take before they finally break?”
This isn’t just the logline — it’s the central question pulsing through every frame of Straw, Tyler Perry’s boldest, rawest, and most unflinching film to date.
In Straw, Perry strips away the sentimentality and surface-level melodrama often associated with his past work, opting instead for a bruising, vérité-style exploration of what happens when the weight of the world becomes unbearable.
Taraji P. Henson delivers a career-defining performance as Janiyah Wiltkinson, a working-class Black mother whose life is in quiet crisis. Raising a chronically ill daughter alone in a crumbling neighborhood, Janiyah does what millions of women do every day: survive. But in the span of just 24 hours, everything begins to collapse — she’s fired without cause, falsely accused of a crime, and pushed into a justice system that sees her not as a person, but as a problem to process.
This is not a redemption story. There is no knight in shining armor. There is no miracle.
Instead, Straw is a mirror — one that reflects the soul-crushing bureaucracy, racial disparity, and gendered expectations that grind down women like Janiyah every single day.
And yet, it never feels preachy.
That’s in part thanks to Perry’s surprising directorial restraint, and a powerful supporting cast:
Sherri Shepherd plays a neighbor whose kindness comes with invisible scars.
Teyana Taylor is a young mother who shows what it means to fight without hope.
And Sinbad appears in one of the most unexpectedly poignant roles of his career — as a once-powerful man now silenced by the very system he used to believe in.
Though shot in just four days, Straw never feels rushed. In fact, its sense of urgency is part of its brilliance — the camera lingers, trembles, listens. Every silence is deafening. Every small humiliation hits like thunder.
More than a film, Straw is a warning.
A social scream in cinematic form.
It reminds us that strength isn’t always loud — sometimes it’s a woman holding herself together for just one more hour.
Premiering on Netflix on June 6, 2025, Straw will leave you shaken, breathless — and most importantly, thinking long after the credits roll.