If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or your mental health, resources are available at www.wannatalkaboutit.com. You are not alone.
Netflix’s new drama Steve adapts Max Porter’s acclaimed novella Shy into a raw, intimate film about a reform school on the brink of closure. Directed by Tim Mielants (Small Things Like These), the movie follows one fraught day at Stanton Wood Manor, a progressive but underfunded residential school for troubled young men. Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy plays Steve, the exhausted headteacher trying to hold the place, and himself, together.
A school fighting to survive
It’s 1996. Steve arrives early at Stanton Wood Manor, an old English estate turned into a “last-chance” reform college modeled on Finland’s rehabilitative system. The day is complicated from the start: a documentary crew has been invited to film but quickly proves intrusive, searching rooms and framing the boys in a negative light.
The school houses a small group of volatile yet deeply intelligent teens: Shy (Jay Lycurgo), Riley, Ash, Benny, Jamie, and Nabeel among them. They’re bright and funny but carry heavy trauma, anger, and grief. Teachers like Steve and his deputy Amanda (Tracey Ullman) fight to give them dignity and hope, even while underpaid, understaffed, and constantly criticized for the school’s high cost.
Adding to the strain, Steve learns that Stanton Wood has been sold. The staff will have less than six months to shut down, displacing the boys midyear. The news hits him hard. Once envisioned as a “center of excellence,” the school has been cut to the bone by years of budget slashing.
Shy’s quiet collapse
The film’s emotional center is 17-year-old Shy, whose family has just severed contact in a cruel, final phone call. Shy keeps this pain private, even as new teacher Shola Marshall (Little Simz) and therapist Jenny (Emily Watson) sense his withdrawal. Jenny warns Steve that Shy is in real danger, but Steve, already numb from chronic pain, addiction to prescription opioids, and lingering guilt from a past car accident, is stretched too thin to respond.
The day spirals: a fire alarm, documentary manipulation, a cynical politician’s staged visit, and growing unrest among the boys. Steve swallows more oxycodone and alcohol to cope.
That night, Shy sneaks out with a backpack full of rocks. He heads toward the pond behind the school, intent on ending his life. Steve, drugged and disoriented, wakes late but senses something wrong when he finds Shy’s empty room and a note. He rouses Amanda, and together they search the grounds.
The breaking point, and a fragile hope
In one of the film’s most harrowing sequences, the camera stays still as Shy stands at the pond’s edge, rocks weighing him down. We feel Steve’s helplessness as he races through the dark. Shy finally uses the stones to smash a window instead, breaking his way back into the manor rather than into the water. It’s a moment of survival, raw and unsentimental.
The next morning, Steve drives home to his wife and daughters, kisses them goodbye, and records one last tape for Shola, a tender roll call of the boys’ strengths and quirks. He reminds her that there is a bigger world for them: music, love, places still to be seen. Then he climbs into the attic. The film ends ambiguously, hinting at his despair but leaving his fate unresolved.
What Steve is really saying
While Steve doesn’t shy away from anger, self-destruction, or institutional failure, it refuses to reduce its characters to case studies. It’s a film about care under impossible conditions: teachers who love but burn out, teenagers dismissed as lost causes yet still capable of brilliance, and the quiet fight to keep empathy alive in a system eager to abandon them.
Key Details
- Title: Steve
- Director: Tim Mielants
- Screenplay: Max Porter (adapting his novel Shy)
- Cast: Cillian Murphy, Jay Lycurgo, Tracey Ullman, Little Simz, Emily Watson
- Setting: England, 1996, at Stanton Wood Manor reform school
- Release: Limited theatrical run Sept. 19, 2025; streaming on Netflix Oct. 3, 2025
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or your mental health, resources are available at www.wannatalkaboutit.com. You are not alone.
