After watching Nickel Boys, I was left completely stunned by what director RaMell Ross created. This movie tells the story of two young Black boys named Elwood and Turner who end up at a horrible reform school called Nickel Academy in 1960s Florida, but the way it tells this story is unlike anything I've ever seen before.
The plot starts with a smart, hopeful teenager named Elwood Curtis who lives with his grandmother in Tallahassee. Elwood believes deeply in the civil rights movement and the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. He's a good kid who does well in school and works hard. One day, he gets accepted into a special college program and decides to hitchhike there to check it out. Unfortunately, the man who picks him up is driving a stolen car. When the police catch them, Elwood gets arrested too, even though he had nothing to do with stealing the car. Because he's only a teenager, the judge sends him to Nickel Academy, which is supposed to be a reform school.
When Elwood arrives at Nickel, he quickly learns that this place is nothing like a real school. The white students get nice rooms and good treatment, while the Black students like Elwood are forced to live in terrible conditions and do hard labor. The school makes money by basically using the boys as free workers. The superintendent, Spencer, is cruel and corrupt. He lies to the boys about being able to earn early release through good behavior, but really keeps them there until they turn eighteen so he can keep making money off their work.
At Nickel, Elwood meets Turner, another Black student who becomes his best friend. While Elwood still believes that if you do the right thing and trust the system, everything will work out okay, Turner has become much more cynical. He's learned that the world is unfair and that survival means keeping your head down and not causing trouble. The two boys have very different ways of looking at the world, but they form a strong bond.
The school is incredibly violent and abusive. When Elwood tries to help another student who's being bullied, both boys get taken to a building called the White House in the middle of the night and beaten so badly that Elwood has to spend two weeks in the infirmary recovering. The staff also forces students to participate in boxing matches for entertainment, and when one student named Griff refuses to lose on purpose as ordered, Spencer and his men take him out back and kill him. The other students tell themselves that Griff escaped because the truth is too horrible to accept.
Throughout all this abuse, Elwood keeps a secret notebook where he writes down all the terrible things happening at Nickel. He believes that if he can just get this information to the right people, they'll shut the school down and help the students. When government inspectors come to check on the school, Elwood wants to give them his notebook, but he gets sent away on an errand. Turner volunteers to deliver the notebook for him, though Turner doesn't really believe it will help.
As expected, nothing happens after the inspectors leave. In fact, things get worse for Elwood. Spencer and his assistant start torturing him, locking him in a dark room with barely any food for weeks. Eventually, Turner learns that Spencer is planning to kill Elwood just like he killed Griff. Turner rescues Elwood and they try to escape together on bicycles they stole from a house they had been working at. They ride all night trying to get to safety, but just when they're almost free, a van from the school catches up to them. The two boys run across a field while the men from Nickel shoot at them with rifles. Turner manages to escape into the woods, but Elwood gets shot and dies.
Here's where the movie reveals its biggest twist. Throughout the film, we've been seeing scenes of an adult man living in New York City in the 1970s, 80s, and beyond. This man runs a successful moving company and eventually gets married to a woman named Millie. I thought this is adult Elwood who survived and made a good life for himself. But in the final act, we learn that this man is actually Turner, who took on Elwood's identity after his friend was killed. Turner felt so guilty about leaving Elwood behind and was so inspired by Elwood's hope and goodness that he decided to live his life as Elwood, trying to honor his friend's memory and ideals.
The movie ends with Turner, still using Elwood's name, going to testify at a hearing about the abuses at Nickel Academy. By this time, unmarked graves have been discovered at the old school site, proving that many students were murdered there. Turner is the only Black survivor willing to speak out about what really happened.
What makes this movie so special and also so challenging to watch is how it's filmed. Director RaMell Ross shot almost the entire movie from a first-person point of view, meaning we see everything through the eyes of either Elwood or Turner. It's like we become these characters and experience everything they experience. When someone talks to them, they're looking directly into the camera, talking to us. When they get beaten, we see it from their perspective, looking down at their own bodies or up at their attackers.
This filming style is brilliant but also makes the movie very intense and sometimes hard to follow. Some people got motion sickness from the camera movement, and others found it confusing because you don't always see the main characters' faces clearly. But for me, this technique made everything feel incredibly real and personal. When Elwood gets beaten, you feel like you're the one being hurt. When he looks at his scars in the mirror, you're seeing your own reflection. It puts you right inside the experience in a way that regular filming never could.
The performances are absolutely incredible, especially considering how challenging it must have been for the actors to perform while looking directly into the camera most of the time. Ethan Herisse as young Elwood brings such hope and determination to the character, even when terrible things are happening to him. Brandon Wilson as Turner perfectly shows a boy who's trying to protect himself by becoming tough and cynical, but still has goodness inside. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood's grandmother is heartbreaking as a woman who loves her grandson but is terrified that his idealism will get him killed.
The movie also uses archival footage throughout, showing real images from the space program and the civil rights movement. This creates a powerful contrast between the amazing progress humanity was making in some areas while these horrible abuses were happening to children in places like Nickel Academy.
What really impressed me about Nickel Boys is how it handles such a dark, difficult subject without ever feeling like it's showing violence just for shock value. The camera often looks away during the worst moments, or shows us the aftermath rather than the actual beating. This makes it somehow more powerful because your imagination fills in what happened, and that's often worse than anything they could show you.
The sound design Is also incredible. You hear every footstep, every breath, every small noise that these boys would hear. Sometimes the sound becomes overwhelming, just like how trauma can make normal sounds feel unbearable. The music by Alex Somers and Scott Alario perfectly supports the emotional journey without ever overwhelming the story.
One thing that really stuck with me is how the movie shows the way trauma affects people for their entire lives. Even as an adult living a successful life in New York, Turner still carries the weight of what happened at Nickel. He struggles with relationships and can't fully enjoy his success because of the guilt and pain he carries. When he finally tells his wife the truth about his identity, it's one of the most emotional moments in the film.
The movie is definitely not easy to watch. It deals with child abuse, murder, and systemic racism in ways that are very realistic and disturbing. Some scenes are genuinely hard to sit through, especially when you know this is based on real events that happened at places like the Dozier School for Boys in Florida.
The Dozier School for Boys was a reform school in Marianna, Florida. It ran from 1900 until it was shut down in 2011. Over the years, many boys sent there were beaten, abused, and even sexually assaulted. Some were sent for small crimes, while others were just orphans or troubled kids. The school had separate areas for Black and White boys, and Black students were often treated much worse. Many survivors came forward later with painful stories about what happened to them there.
In 2014, investigators found unmarked graves on the school grounds. This confirmed rumors that boys had died and were secretly buried there. Some boys had disappeared without a trace. These findings confirmed the real-life events that inspired The Nickel Boys book, which used a fictional story to reflect what truly happened at the Dozier School. The school is now closed for good. Even with all the evidence, no one has been punished or sent to jail for the things that happened at Dozier.
Nickel Academy is not a real place, it's a fictional name created by author Colson Whitehead in his novel The Nickel Boys. It was directly inspired by the real-life Dozier School for Boys in Florida. The characters, like Elwood and Turner, are fictional, but the abuse, segregation, and even the discovery of unmarked graves are all based on true events at Dozier.
As of 2019, 82 suspected graves have been identified, with 55 bodies previously exhumed by forensic teams. However, many believe the number of deaths is undercounted, and researchers and survivor groups suggest the actual total could be much higher.
Hundreds of boys survived and later testified to abuses and sought compensation. Recent news reports (2024–2025) confirm that hundreds of victims are now recognized as eligible for compensation under a $20 million program established by the state of Florida. Survivors, often called the "White House Boys" continue to advocate for justice and recognition of what they endured.
Comparing this to the book it's based on, I can see why some people feel the movie doesn't quite capture everything from the novel. In the book, Elwood's optimism and belief in justice comes through much more clearly. The movie version of Elwood seems more distant and less hopeful, which changes his character somewhat. The book also provides more background and internal thoughts that help you understand the characters better. Reading the novel, you get much more detail about the corruption at Dozier and the individual personalities of the various students and staff members.
However, what the movie does that the book can't is put you directly into the experience through that first-person camera work. The book tells you about these events, but the movie makes you feel like you're living them. The visual storytelling in the film creates emotions and sensations that words on a page simply can't match. The movie also uses the passage of time more effectively, jumping between different eras to gradually reveal the truth about what happened.
Both the book and movie succeed in honoring the real victims while creating a powerful story about resilience and the lasting effects of trauma. The book gives you more information and character development, while the movie gives you a more visceral, emotional experience.
Nickel Boys is one of those movies that stays with you long after you watch it. It's challenging, beautiful, and heartbreaking all at once. It's the kind of film that reminds you why movies can be so powerful – they can make you feel things and understand experiences that you might never encounter otherwise. While it's definitely not a movie for everyone, due to its difficult subject matter and unique filming style, it's absolutely a movie that needed to be made and deserves to be seen.
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