Stanton Wood. Cillian Murphy as Steve in Stanton Wood. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Neflix © 2025
From Big Things Films and actor/producer Cillian Murphy, Steve is the first of several awards-centric Fall festival dramas from Netflix in 2025. Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last month ahead of a limited theatrical engagement in the U.S., Ireland, & the UK, the film brings back the team from the 2024 drama Small Things Like These including Murphy (Oppenheimer, Batman Begins), his producing partner Alan Moloney (My Father’s Dragon, The Siege of Jadotville), & director Tim Mielants (Legion, Peaky Blinders).
Based on the novella “Shy” by Max Porter, who also handles the screen adaptation, the story follows Steve, a headteacher for the residential reform college Stanton Wood Manor, as he battles through a particularly challenging 24 hours at the school. While arriving to a news crew producing a segment on the school, Steve (Murphy) also manages personal & professional relationships with students and faculty, many of whom are coping with extreme mental health issues and physical aggressions towards one another. Beyond the normal fistfights and repeated outbursts, the school staff is also dealing with cutbacks and lack of support from the trust that determines their budget with a looming potential for a complete shutdown. With everyone looking to Steve for stability and leadership, he must find a way to keep the school’s priorities on the tracks without allowing his past demons or his current mental struggles to derail him.
Beyond Oscar winner Murphy in the titular role, the cast includes actress/comedian Tracey Ullman (Tracey Takes On) as Amanda, Emily Watson (Small Things Like These, Punch Drunk Love) as Jenny, Little Simz (Venom: Let There Be Carnage) as Shola, & Jay Lycurgo (Titans) as Shy.
Packed with chaos & compassion in its tight 90-minute runtime, Steve delivers a portrait of the men & women our society wants to write off and the amazing workers with enough mental endurance & pureness of intention to give their best efforts to reach them. In many ways, it’s also a hit piece on the system that would rather see troubled youth with severe mental illness sent to jail or drugged up in a mental health facility simply because it’s cheaper or easier, instead of investing in true rehabilitation efforts. Battling budget cuts & lack of staff and support, the few who would even attempt to bring these outcasts back from the brink are showcased here with the unflinching trauma they incur and a level of care & empathy for their struggles.
Through Porter’s script and Mielants’ immersive direction style, the film utilizes handheld cinematography, news magazine style interviews, and waves of hyper-realistic mayhem to create an intensely faithful voyeurism that captures the bedlam these workers must sift through to get to the potential humanity on the other side.
Stanton Wood. Jay Lycurgo as Shy in Stanton Wood. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Neflix © 2025
In the creation and execution of Murphy’s Steve and Lycurgo’s Shy, the film attempts to capture two sides of the same mental health journey and how, in many instances, the broken, damaged, or flawed among us are the first in line to help others in their fight.
Characterized by his colleagues as “the pro”, “the rock”, or “the boss”, Steve puts on a facade to accomplish the goals of his program while hanging by a thread behind the scenes, surrounded by kids who are running with scissors to cut him down. While Steve is tormented by past trauma from a fatal car crash and copes with self-medicating, the story allows us to see Shy’s inability to get past his prior demons as a comparable look at a different form of the same inescapable darkness when they don’t allow those around them to help. Their final moments in the film are important as they both manage to rise above the worst to land in a place surrounded by those closest to them.
With a solid cast headed by Murphy & Lycurgo and a thoughtful, empathetic examination of its subject, Steve is a worthwhile drama that shines a light on the complex world of mental health and the workers who sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. The constant struggles and little victories in the day to day are well displayed alongside a shot across the bow of the bureaucratic response to people in need. While it may get lost in the awards-centric films to come, Steve stands alone as the best Netflix original film of the year so far.
Watch Steve If You Liked
- Short Term 12
- Sing Sing
- Half Nelson
- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
- Small Things Like These
MVP of Steve
Cillian Murphy as Steve
Stanton Wood. (L to R) Youssef Kerkour as Owen, Tracey Ullman as Amanda, Cillian Murphy as Steve in Stanton Wood. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Neflix © 2025
Few actors working today have the depth and range to capture mental health struggles with enough care, grace, dignity, & complexity. In Steve, Cillian Murphy uses his natural expressiveness and subtle demeanor to deliver a rich characterization of a man clawing out of his pain to extend his hand to those just like him. Murphy’s portrayal of a headteacher fighting for the mental survival of his students while taking on the system that doesn’t care is a careful balance of frustration, compassion, and depression that only a gifted, prestigious actor like he could pull off.
90 minutes of chaos & compassion that gives an intensely intimate look at severe mental health and people willing to put themselves on the line to help them. Murphy leads an impressive cast in a carefully crafted examination of the constant battles against trauma, illness, & institutional challenges.
