One of the most haunting films you’ll see all year, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys may drop the determiner from its title (it’s cleaner, after all), but it doesn’t lose an ounce of impact. A chilling feat of cinematic adaptation, Nickel Boys marks the documentarian director's first foray into narrative feature filmmaking, employing an uncomfortably engrossing style that grounds the audience in the harrowing circumstances of its characters. Shot almost entirely from the first-person point of view of two young men incarcerated at a segregated reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida, Nickel Boys forces the audience to see the world through the eyes of two Black boys desperately trying to survive the crushing forces of corruption and the inhumane abuse of their captors.

We meet Elwood (initially portrayed by Ethan Cole Sharp) first, a bright student with a loving grandmother, played by Anjanue Ellis-Taylor. Elwood quickly develops an idealistic sense of justice, in part inspired by the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., and as he grows up – with Ethan Herisse inheriting the role – he desires more active participation in the Civil Rights Movement. His grandmother discourages him from anything she deems too dangerous, while his supportive high school teacher, Mr. Hill (Jimmie Falls), encourages him to attend free university classes – a disgustingly rare opportunity for Black students at the time. While hitchhiking to his first day of college, Elwood is offered a ride by a man who, unbeknownst to him, has stolen the car. Falsely labeled an accomplice in the crime, Elwood is sent to Nickel Academy, where he and the audience meet the film's second POV character.

Turner, a revolving-door inmate at the heinous house of correction, lacks Elwood’s idealism, adopting a more cynical attitude toward both the school and the outside world to cope with the cruelties he’s had to endure. Despite this, Turner slowly takes Elwood under his wing, defending him from other students and taking him on deliveries in which he and Harper (Fred Hechinger), a staff member at Nickel Academy, sell the school’s food supplies to local store owners. The Black students at Nickel are loaned out for free labor, such as painting porches, and are also made to compete in rigged boxing matches. These boys must throw their fights to ensure the victory of the white students – and the white men betting on them – or face dire consequences. Despite the harsh reality of their situation, Elwood remains optimistic that by serving his time without incident, he will eventually be able to resume the life that was stolen from him.

What Turner knows, and what the audience gradually learns, is that Elwood’s faith is misplaced. In addition to the poor education and hard manual labor, the Black students at Nickel Academy are subjected to brutal corporal punishment, carried out by the school’s administrator, Spencer (Hamish Linklater in a truly terrifying performance). Elwood receives his first taste of this demented discipline after attempting to save a fellow student from being beaten, once again finding himself labeled a participant in an act he had no involvement with. Elwood resolves to expose Nickel Academy, attempting to slip a written account of the treatment of Black students to a visiting group of officials – their presence on campus inspiring a rare day of kindness, complete with ice cream, from the so-called educators.

Turner’s subtle suggestions for Elwood to drop his crusade turn into desperate pleas as Turner reveals that there are bodies of Black students buried on the Nickel Academy property. The horrors of Nickel Boys are compounded by their basis in fact, as the fictional Nickel Academy serves as a stand-in for the very real Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. For over a century, ADGS faced accusations of abuse, beatings, rape, and murder of students by its staff, and despite multiple investigations and pledges of change, the cruelty continued until the school was forcibly shut down by the state of Florida in 2011. An excavation in 2012 uncovered 55 identified burials and nearly 100 confirmed deaths, findings that are interspersed throughout Nickel Boys.

The truly haunting excavation photos enhance Nickel Boys' impact, but other archival footage spliced throughout the film – mostly centered around the space race – often detracts from it. While Ross’ decision to shoot the film in the first person is a bold choice that largely works, it can be taxing on the audience, despite cinematographer Jomo Fray rising to the challenge. The film’s framing can, at best, be disorienting, and at worst, alienating, especially in the first act. However, patient viewers willing to study the curriculum that Ross has crafted will find the context clues that confirm through which character’s eyes each event is seen as the story unfolds.

Nickel Boys asks a lot of its audience by forcing them to experience its story without the detachment of more conventional cinematic techniques. Its form is successful in its goal to create discomfort, but at times, it is difficult to engage with – particularly when it shifts to a third-person point of view to follow an adult Elwood (Daveed Diggs) as he witnesses the investigation into Nickel in the 2010s and struggles to come to grips with his past and the decision to come forward and share it. That being said, the investment it requires pays off with a powerful story that cannot be ignored, especially when turning a blind eye allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place.

Nickel Boys is set for a limited theatrical release on October 25, before streaming on Prime Video on a currently unannounced date.