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Writer/Director Timo Tjahjanto (May the Devil Take You, The Night Comes For Us, V/H/S/2) approaches his action features the same way he does horror: full throttle. There’s no coming up for air in a Tjahjanto joint; the filmmaker goes for the jugular and immerses audiences in a violent sensory assault. So much so that it’s difficult not to see the overlap between genres. That’s certainly the case in The Shadow Strays, an actioner so propulsive in its ultraviolence that its constant barrage of carnage holds you firm in its grip and all but begs to be seen with the rowdiest crowd possible.
The Shadow Strays gets the pulse-pounding straight away, with an intense assassination attempt in Japan that leaves a pile of bodies on the floor and a thrilling amount of arterial spray. It also ends in failure for the assassin-in-training at the center of the carnage, a 17-year-old with the codename 13 (Aurora Ribero). 13’s mission failure gets her suspended, and she is sent to Jakarta to wait for reassignment or proof that she can stay on task without pausing for collateral damage. A move that’ll prove 13’s handlers right when the erstwhile assassin meets 11-year-old Monji (Ali Fikry), who loses his mother to a nasty crime syndicate and sets out to rescue him. Naturally, 13 will carve a path straight to trouble.
The simple setup gives way to the expected levels of brutal, bone-crunching, and groin-slicing fight sequences, and you can count on Tjahjanto to pack in the action. The sheer brutality is the filmmaker’s trademark- approaching bodily harm the same as if this were an extreme slasher. It’s the breathless fight choreography and the visceral impact that maintains the breakneck, propulsive pacing, which goes far in a rather padded runtime. There’s a weight to the action; the actors and talented stunt performers throw their entire selves into the battles, and the filmmaker isn’t afraid to showcase their exhaustion over sustained physical exertion. It’s a gripping onslaught of pain and death. On that front, Tjahjanto fearlessly culls his cast with reckless abandon. There’s no safety net for any, not the villains and certainly not the innocent bystanders that get pulled into the chaos. And there’s an insane amount of chaos; Tjahjanto is a filmmaker who revels in excess to ensure you get the maximum bang for your buck and does so with aplomb.
That any could die, and so savagely, furthers the unpredictable quality. 13 is a young killer still in training and with deep-seated trauma. It makes her volatile and prone to bucking authority, a problem for her organization but a win for audiences. Aurora Ribero more than succeeds in imbuing 13 with empathetic pathos that instills rooting interest. It’s not just 13’s adaptive murder skills that liven up the revolving door of exciting set pieces that’s winsome, with Ribero demonstrating breathless and committed action prowess, but the depth of emotion that gives a tangible sense of stakes. The setup is simple, but it’s 13’s grit, desperation, heartache, and purity that refuses to get crushed out of existence and carries rare lulls between the next fight to the death.
In many ways, The Shadow Strays feels like a loose extension of Julie Estelle’s The Operator, a scene-stealing standout character from brutal brawler The Night Comes for Us and one that Tjahjanto intended to expand upon in a sequel that has yet to be greenlit. It hints at a larger world of female assassins hired to clean up some of the world’s scummiest pockets, with teases of a larger backstory. Also like The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays opens up its rather small-scaled story at the end, leaving the door open for continuation. That we still have no sequel for the former renders The Shadow Strays‘ opening a bit more frustrating than thrilling, so it’s your move, Netflix. There’s room to continue both, and this crowd-pleaser demands more Ribero and Tjahjanto-induced gory madness.
The Shadow Strays made its World Premiere at TIFF and releases on Netflix on October 17, 2024.