For his third feature, “Newborn,” the writer-director Nate Parker leans into the psychological thriller form to tell the story of Chris Newborn (David Oyelowo). When Chris makes a fateful decision to protect his brother, Keith (Jimmie Fails), who fled the scene of a car crash, his rash resolve takes him away from his fiancée, Tara (Olivia Washington), a nurse, and, unbeknown to either, their unborn child. This tango between love and allegiance would have been more than enough to fuel the melodrama “Newborn” starts out with, but Parker has set his sights on a larger issue: the psychic repercussions of solitary confinement.
On the cusp of his release from prison, Chris is unjustly convicted of another crime and is sent to solitary. He’s in isolation for seven years before he gains his freedom. He finally returns to Tara and meets his son, Jake (Aiden Stoxx), who experiences seizures and does not speak. As much as Chris wants to be present, it’s a lot. His re-entry to society is fragile. His moods fluctuate. No wonder the director endowed him with an overly emblematic surname. (It’s the first of many symbolic choices Parker makes, the most striking being an image of Chris trying to find a comfortable sleeping position in a grave.)
After Chris, working as a general contractor, rages at an attorney pressing him to sue corrections officials, Tara suggests they get away from their Queens apartment. A friend has arranged a few weeks for them at a resort upstate that is closed for construction. A sympathetic if increasingly stressed father, a loving mother and a sensitive child: What could possibly go wrong?
Once the family settles in at the upscale resort — with only the occasional visit from Hersh, a seemingly helpful security guard played by Barry Pepper — Chris’s brittleness increases. When Keith shows up strung out, he amplifies Chris’s sense that no one is to be trusted.
If “The Shining” was nudged by the supernatural, Parker injects into this riff on that classic questions about the earned paranoia wrought by racism and the costs of an institutionally sanctioned act of violence that shatters mental health.
Parker has made two other films: “The Birth of a Nation” (about Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion) and “American Skin” (about a veteran who stages a trial for the police officer who fatally shot his teenage son). If the sample size seems small, it may be because of ongoing discomfort with the filmmaker, who was accused and ultimately acquitted in the rape of a fellow student in 1999. The fallout appears to have affected both his acting and directing career.
Parker the writer has tended to overload his screenplays with messages. He does some of that here, as well. Parker the director, however, is gifted with crews and capable actors and that shows, too. The members of his ensemble — especially Oyelowo — find ways to keep us guessing, and caring, to the end.
Newborn Rated R for some violent content/bloody images. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
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