Strays

Cheryl (Ashley Madekwe), a black woman, is living in an undisclosed location in England. She expresses concerns about discrimination and financial difficulties to her sister on the phone. The subsequent scenes show her rejecting phone calls from her spouse and leaving a message on the fridge about going to the hair salon.

Several years later, we are introduced to Neve, a fair-skinned black woman married to Ian (Justin Salinger), a non-black man, with two biracial children, Sebastian (Samuel Small) and Mary (Maria Almeida). She is disdainful of anything associated with "black" lifestyle. Neve works at her kids' school as a deputy headmistress and plans to host a fund-raising gala at her home. She often gets visions of black people and gets disturbed.

Neve wears a wig to hide her true hair. Neve receives a toy car in the mail which she seems to recognize.

As a headmistress, Neve is very successful, but she still hasn't provided her past references to the school. Neve sees Sebastian talking to a black boy at school, and then finds him skipping a class to go into the surrounding woods to smoke a cigarette.

Mary goes ahead and braids her hair in an ethnic style, based on fashion she saw in a YouTube video. Neve is livid with Mary for adopting that hair style.

Sebastian is late coming home from a basketball game and Neve starts hitting him. Neve tries to get the black boy fired, bit is told that it will look and feel like discrimination. The boy confronts Neve in the boy's room where he accuses Neve of abandoning him and Dione.

At a fund-raising gala at her home, Neve confronts two black individuals that she believes to be strangers; they address her as their mother.

Flashbacks to five days prior, with "Carl and Dione" being the focus of the story, the two, black teens Neve has been seeing all over the town and even in the school. The two are on an unknown mission that involves staying at a hotel, with Carl taking on the name "Marvin (Jorden Myrie)" and getting a job as the school janitor and Dione taking the name "Abigail (Bukky Bakray)" and working as an assistant in Ian's office.

They befriend Neve's children, Dione inviting Mary to the hotel room for drinking and partying. Dione braided Mary's hair in an ethnic way. Carl invites Sebastian to smoke, after his basketball game which is why he was late going back to home. Afterwards, Carl convinces Sebastian to brutally attack his school bully.

Mary invites Dione to her mother's gala, which is why Carl and Dione showed up there.

In the present day, it is revealed that Neve is Cheryl, and Carl and Dione are indeed her children. Cheryl tells Ian that her husband was a bad man and thus she left. Ian knows that Cheryl left as she could not stand her black life. Cheryl feels she is justified as fathers get to walk away from their family all the time.

She meets them at a diner and gives them ten thousand pounds each in order to help them back on their feet as they return to London. She explains that their father was a bad man and that she left the kids with their auntie. But the auntie didn't want the kids and gave them away. Carl and Dione want to move into the big house with Cheryl/Neve.

However, Carl and Dione break into Neve's house. Carl takes everyone's phones and dumps them in the sink, where he turns on the water that starts to flood the living room. Carl and Dione claim it's Dione's birthday and they should celebrate as a family and force the family to order Uber Eats.

Carl confronts Neve for trying to pay them off, which was unknown to the rest of her family. This leads to Ian threatening a divorce, however, Dione intervenes and suggests playing a board game. Neve, who is visibly upset, vomits. Afterwards, she appears to adopt a new and happy persona, and the group begins to play Scrabble. Carl becomes annoyed and forfeits the game before demanding that Ian accompany him to the family's gym. There, Carl coerces Ian to lift increasingly heavy weights until he is unable to hold them, and the weight falls on him, resulting in his apparent death.

Meanwhile, after the Uber Eats driver arrives, Neve tells the group she will tip the driver and be right back; she does not return. The driver's engine starts up and drives away, implying that Neve has left with him. Mary and Sebastian are left standing in the flooded living room with Dione and Carl, as Neve has now abandoned her second set of children.