'Nickel Boys' review: Boy's P.O.V. sees horrors of real-life Florida reform school
Just as 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” was a great epic about a conspiracy of murders of the people of the Osage Nation, and 2024’s “Small Things Like These” was brilliant historical fiction about the exposure of the Magdalene Laundries scandal in Ireland, the late 2024/early 2025 release “Nickel Boys” is a powerful and sobering work of drama based on the true story of the Dozier School for Boys, where generations of teenage boys and young men were subjected to brutal beatings, institutional racism, sexual abuse, torture and murder over the course of more than a century.
More than 100 children died from fire, blunt-force trauma, disease and gunshot wounds. After the state of Florida shut down the school in 2011, dozens of unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds.
As was the case with “Flower Moon” and “Small Things,” this is not something you will necessarily want to watch multiple times over the years — it is the polar opposite of what we call “comfort viewing” — but it is a film that deserves to be seen once by the largest possible audience. This is story that should be remembered, and it is a movie that marks a remarkably original and at times daringly avant-garde feature debut for director and co-writer RaMell Ross.
Shot from a distinct P.O.V. and featuring a jagged-edged, docudrama style that imbues much of the material with the qualities of a dream turning into a waking nightmare, or hazy memories of things better left forgotten, “Nickel Boys” is transformative, albeit painfully visceral at times. It is a not a viewing experience one shakes off easily, nor should it be.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead, with Ross co-writing the adaptation with Joslyn Barnes, “Nickel Boys” opens in 1962, in the waning years (at least legally) of Jim Crow-era Tallahassee, Florida. In a grounded performance of unwavering heart that’s also a tricky acting challenge (more on that in a moment), Ethan Herisse is Elwood, a standout high school student who has a growing interest in the Civil Rights Movement and is the whole world to Hattie (the always wonderful Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), the loving and supportive grandmother who raised him.
Encouraged by his teacher Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails) to take a course at a local college, Elwood hitches a ride to the school with a man who turns out to be a car thief, and Elwood is unjustly implicated in the crime. He’s sent to Nickel Academy, which to the casual outside eye might appear to be a solid institution for learning and reform and bettering oneself but is actually a house of horrors.
Elwood meets and befriends Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the two create a bond that will be of great value to them as they endure the prison-like conditions at Nickel, while Elwood, inspired by the teachings and ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King, explores a means of leaving the school via legal arguments.
Up until this point, these experiences are seen through the eyes of Elwood, whose reflection we capture in a moment here and there. When Elwood looks down to avoid eye contact with the cruel and sadistic white supervisors, e.g., Hamish Linklater’s Spencer, who unflinchingly beat and abuse boys for the slightest perceived infraction, “we” look down as well. Once Elwood meets Turner, the viewpoint shifts back and forth between the two characters.
(This is what I meant about it being something of a challenge for Herisse to play this role. He is the center of the story, but we are seeing much of it through his eyes. The camera becomes the character for both Elwood and Turner.)
Director Ross and the cinematographer Jomo Fray infuse “Nickel Boys” with snippets of simple beauty, especially in the early scenes when the young Elwood (played by Ethan Cole Sharp) has a child’s-eye wonder when observing the particulars of day-to-day life. This is in stark contrast to the sequences at Nickel Academy, where the same P.O.V. technique reflects the chaos and the terror consuming Elwood’s mind, with the violence taking place off screen.
Arguably the most powerful scene in the film occurs as a kind of epilogue, where two adult men who survived Nickel Academy run into each other at a tavern. One man has managed to forge a life, to move forward, at least on some level. The other man has not. He is still alive, but his spirit and soul were buried long ago. The number of victims extends far beyond the body count of those unmarked graves.