[SPOILERS] There are three reasons you need to watch Newborn, the latest feature written and directed by Nate Parker and starring David Oyelowo: the brilliant acting, the gripping story, and the real-world change it aims to inspire.
Newborn marks Parker’s third time in the director’s chair for a feature film, following his powerful work on The Birth of a Nation (2016) and American Skin (2019). It is a devastating, brilliantly executed film about the agonizing aftereffects of a man who survived years in solitary confinement, only to inadvertently bring that unhealed trauma home to his family.
The film opens in Brooklyn, introducing us to Chris Newborn (Oyelowo) and his wife, Tara Benton (Olivia Washington). They are in their apartment, completely wrapped up in each other, acting like newlyweds enjoying a quiet night in. The chemistry between the two is beautiful, and this film proves to be a massive breakout moment for Washington, whose performance is nothing short of magnetic.
Everything shifts when Chris’s brother Keith (Jimmie Fails) arrives at their door, bruised and panicked, confessing to a hit-and-run as police sirens wail in the distance. Knowing his brother already has multiple felonies on his record, Chris makes a split-second, life-altering decision.
He puts on his brother’s clothes and takes the fall. The scene begs a terrifying question: How much are you willing to sacrifice for your family? For Chris, the duty to protect his younger brother outweighs his own freedom, forcing him to leave his wife behind.
One of Parker’s sharpest directorial choices is that the film does not spend a lot of time inside the actual prison. Audiences have seen the standard, romanticized prison yard narratives before. Instead, this story is told from the inside out, focusing on the psychological warfare of isolation and what happens when a prisoner returns to society supposedly “rehabilitated”.
While serving his time, Chris is framed by corrupt correctional officers for a murder he didn’t commit. As punishment, he is sentenced to nearly a decade in solitary confinement. Eventually, tapes surface revealing the true killers, and Chris is fully exonerated.
He is released, but it quickly becomes apparent that he is still mentally trapped behind bars. The film deeply explores the horrors of isolation, a reality that the filmmakers are actively fighting against. As the creators have noted through their advocacy, on any given day in America, between 80,000 and 100,000 people, including women and children, are locked in solitary confinement.
Chris returns home to Tara and a son he never knew he had, Jake (Aiden Stoxx). Jake is a young, nonverbal child who suffers from seizures. Despite having minimal lines, Stoxx delivers a profoundly endearing performance, grounding Chris’s chaotic return to fatherhood.
Initially, Chris’s uneasiness feels understandable for a man who hasn’t tasted freedom in years. He tries to build a bond with Jake. But soon, his brother comes to visit, an event that triggers a severe seizure in his son. From this point, the dynamic shifts, and Chris’s mental state rapidly deteriorates.
During a family trip out of the city, Chris’s paranoia takes the wheel. He is entirely unable to sleep in a normal bed next to his wife. Seeking the only comfort his broken mind understands, he effectively builds a makeshift prison cell inside the renovated hotel they are staying at just to fall asleep. His behavior grows erratic and dangerous: he gets into a physical altercation at a diner, becomes paranoid that Tara is cheating on him, hears phantom gunshots, and ultimately breaks into a car to steal a gun.
The tension violently peaks when Chris completely loses his grip on reality. He believes he is hiding his brother from people who want him dead, spurred on by his brother’s voice telling him he needs to protect Jake.
The tragic twist? The brother isn’t there. He actually died years ago. Chris has been suffering from severe auditory and visual hallucinations, a very real symptom of the mental destruction caused by prolonged solitary confinement.
Washington’s performance in this final act is a masterclass. She beautifully captures the heartbreaking reality of a Black woman who fiercely loves a Black man with severe mental health issues, but who ultimately knows he has become dangerous. She has to make the impossible choice to save herself and her son.
The film reaches its climax with a gut-wrenching scene: as Chris is taken away in handcuffs, his nonverbal son Jake screams out “Dad” for the very first time. It is a beautiful, crushing sequence that highlights the absurdity of the justice system and the over-indexed incarceration of Black men.
What makes Newborn a true masterpiece is that the creators aren’t just telling a story; they are demanding justice. The character of Chris Newborn represents fragments of the very real survivors of solitary confinement, like Richard Rosario, who spent seven of his twenty wrongfully convicted years in the box.
Oyelowo and Parker distributed the film through their own Mansa Studios out of a necessity to own their narrative and protect the film’s deeper mission. They aren’t looking for standard Hollywood accolades; they have attached this film to a robust impact campaign designed to end solitary confinement for good.
Parker views the film as a 93-minute empathy machine, ensuring that once you step out of the theater, the imagery and the message stay with you forever.
Newborn is an uncomfortable, necessary, and deeply humanizing film that will leave you fundamentally changed.
Newborn is now playing in AMC theaters and streaming on Mansa.
