First. You do not strum a violin. It is a bowed instrument, without the same fret board as a guitar. So the title of the film makes no sense, since violin is at the center of the film. Chloe Bailey plays Layla, a young violinist with a complicated past, who is offered a chance to tutor a wealthy kid in her home, in a tutor/nanny hybrid situation, which seems to have a very open end of what she’s here to actually do. It has all the vibes of previous films, where this family is full of secrets, and Layla has to figure them out for herself.

The film is directed by Malcom D. lee, whose entire filmography is on the other end of the spectrum. This is the director behind The Best Man, roll Bounce, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Night School, and Girls Trip. he does comedies, and he really does a lovely job with black ensembles. He’s been paired with Tyler Perry, who on the other end of the spectrum, has dabbled in this type of film, and rarely makes anything remotely artistic. He’s usually too involved in too many things for him to devote his full attention to a quality project. The same could be said for Jason Blum, who has thrown this under the Blumhouse banner for Universal, as he seems willing to put his name anywhere. I assume once the tarp comes off the Kennedy Center, it will say Blumhouse Presents The Kennedy Center. I have to check, but he might have produced this review.

So three creatives with wildly different skill sets and ideas make for a bizarre hodgepodge taken down by a nonsensical salacious screenplay, and not by their acting. The film introduces the idea that Marcus, the male lead and step-father of this wealthy household, is great in bed, but he also has a penchant for choking, kinda. They make a point of repeating it in the many sex scenes he has, but it never has meaning, or even an emotional payoff. I should give a spoiler warning, but it would make sense if his death was then by strangulation, which it isn’t. I’d like to think if the script had a better writer, that full circle moment would have befallen Marcus.

There’s also this snake, which appears to be some kind of venomous snake that lunges when it gets a chance. Most snakes I’ve seen kept as pets, especially for young kids, aren’t aggressive like this snake.So, you know, this snake is going to come into play.Plus, this rich family is super anal about allergens and poor Layla can’t even wear her own clothes. She has to wear approved hypoallergenic clothes, so again, an allergic reaction is in our future.

Then there’s the multi floor set up, and the times they tease someone may or may not fall. It becomes enough of a panic moment, that again I felt like my attention was being poorly manipulated. And poor Layla is written like an idiot. She takes this job, and after the fact learns that Marcus is the stepfather, which is a bit of a coincidence since they slept together long before she got this gig, and she wasn’t hired by him, but rather his spouse’s mother. Run, girl. Run.

Layla does have a fun friend in jasmine (Coco Jones), who brings levity, and I kept wanting her to invade this plot like Lil Rel did in Get OUt. Lynn Whitfield is a legend, and I’d love to praise her role here as the grand matriarch of the home, but man is her role absolutely insane. She has a scene at the end where she has to somehow tie everything together in one of those expository speeches usually reserved for Bond villains, and it is a lot of telling and not showing. It’s like this supporting character is finally airing all her grievances, whether they make sense or not. By the time the film was done, i truly couldn’t figure out what her endgame was.

And what exactly is Layla’s job? One minute she is chaperoning the daughter to and from school, the other she’s giving her mother (Anna Diop) a non-sexual sponge bath. Mind you, that woman is fully capable of doing it herself. She isn’t disabled, she’s just pregnant. So in a scene that seems to serve as a power play, i couldn’t really figure out what the move was.

The deck is heavily stacked against Strum. It is a movie that doesn’t work, on any level, but does feature a few drops of possibility. Chloe Baily does nice with what she’s asked to do, Lynn Whitfield chews up her cartoonish role, and Coco Jones is a blast as the best friend. I don’t think anyone actually gave a bad performance, but they do have bad writing, and there are scenes where things occur that don’t always make sense, or were heavily telegraphed earlier.

Jason Blum has produced good movies. Malcom D Lee has directed some great films, especially ones with black excellence at its core. It is a theme he has here, using this to show successful black characters that enjoy the finer things, all seem educated, and buck stereotypes. This movie could have been made, as is, with a cast of any ethnicity and worked. It isn’t so specific to one experience, and certainly he has pulled out more from the black experience before, but he also thrives on creating the exact type of character Tyler perry avoids. Perry’s characters are messy, and often harmful stereotypes used for his own gain and entertainment. When you put these three together, you get this film.

One time, I was in an audio description focus group, and the question was about regionality in terms of dialect, and if it works, or if it is appropriate. Here, the narrator has this beautiful, clean, clear voice, and I couldn’t tell you where she was from. Then we get to ambulance, which shows that she has a specific way of pronouncing that word. It isn’t ethnically specific. I grew up in the Ozarks, and this was something I heard more than I wanted. But it did stand out, because I don’t think she had an accent, so it felt weird for there to all of a sudden be a regional pronunciation.

Strum never hits the right chord, probably because you don’t strum violins, and Malcolm D. Lee doesn’t direct psychological thrillers, especially ones produced by Tyler Perry and Jason Blum.

Rotten: 3.7/10