Mea Culpa review – Tyler Perry’s schlocky Netflix thriller descends into silliness

Kelly Rowland and Trevante Rhodes do some heavy lifting in an often hilariously messy attempt to recall classics like Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct

There are small pockets of low-rent fun to be had in Tyler Perry’s lurid erotic thriller Mea Culpa, some intentional, most less so. It’s a film that, yes, is about a woman called Mea who is also, yes, at fault, as women often are in the writer-director’s films. The mogul has gained a reputation for punishing his female characters, especially when they dare to stop believing in their husband, no matter how awful his behaviour might be, like in his atrocious 2018 thriller Acrimony, where he had the gall to waste, and chastise, Taraji P Henson.

His latest target is a powerful lawyer played by Kelly Rowland, making a convincing case as leading lady, trapped in a marriage with a letdown, a man fired from his job as an anaesthetist for turning up to work high and drunk (!). He’s also under the thumb of his vile mother, played to such laughable extremes by Kerry O’Malley that I half-expected her to literally start breathing fire. When Mea is approached about defending an extravagant painter, Zayir (Moonlight’s MVP Trevante Rhodes, who deserves far better), accused of murdering his girlfriend, she initially turns it down, not just because the case seems unwinnable but because her brother-in-law would be the opposing attorney (!). But when the aforementioned battleaxe, also dying of cancer (!), insists that Mea not take the case, she decides to rebel and soon finds herself falling for her client. Kinky sex follows.

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