Review of Strays

Strays (1991 TV Movie)
2/10
unconvincing and very, very stupid
16 December 2004
Really stupid bad movie. An older woman with a lot of cats is attacked by something that more or less flies at her, apparently a feral cat (we don't see it, only hear it growling). A couple with a young daughter move into the house; the wife's sister is the real estate agent, and she is also a client of the husband, a divorce lawyer. The wife grows jealous of her sister and in fact, her sister does seem to be pretty slutty and controlling.

The daughter is annoying and stupid. The wife is hysterical, somewhat shrewish, and stupid. The husband is fairly stupid too. The cats (evidently the woman's pets now work for the strange black cat that killed her) as a threat are not particularly convincing. More or less, you have to fall down and be knocked unconscious to be seriously hurt by them.

At one point the husband tries to microwave his coffee. The microwave doesn't work because it has a badly frayed power cord. A divorce lawyer who works in the city can't afford to repair the cord or get a new microwave? With a young daughter in the house, you want a frayed wire (not to mention the fire hazard)? They don't even unplug the microwave when it proves unable to microwave when the cable is jiggled. There must be another reason why they don't replace it or unplug it... and there is. There are other elements in the movie that are similarly telegraphed way ahead of time.

The director likes a lot of cat point-of-view shots which gets to be pretty corny, and also likes zooms in on and close-ups of inanimate objects. There are also a couple of false endings at the end, where it seems like the movie should be over, but it keeps going.
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