Cate Blanchett Faces a Divine Reckoning in Warwick Thornton’s Haunting The New Boy

Courtesy of Vertical- Aswan Reid as New Boy / Cate Blanchett stars in The New Boy, where Indigenous power and Christian faith clash in a haunting parable from Warwick Thornton. In theaters May 23.

A mystic, a nun, and a monastery collide in this haunting parable of colonization and belief—In Select Theaters May 23

If you’ve been tuning in to The Final Cut, you already know The New Boy has been on our radar. And now, Warwick Thornton’s latest—one of the most striking and spiritually tense films of the year—is finally headed to theaters.

Set in 1940s Australia and drenched in metaphor, mystery, and real-world history, The New Boy brings us into a remote monastery run by Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett), a renegade nun with her own way of keeping faith in line. Her peace is disturbed when a new child is dropped off in the dead of night—an Aboriginal boy (played with eerie stillness and presence by newcomer Aswan Reid) who doesn’t speak much, but clearly knows things.

This isn’t your typical faith-vs-science story. It’s a quiet war between Indigenous spirituality and Christian dogma, with the child’s mysterious powers—not explained, not labeled—serving as the film’s spiritual battlefield. Is he a miracle? A threat? Or a reminder that some things aren’t meant to be converted?

What The New Boy does best is never flinch. It doesn’t soften its portrayal of forced assimilation, or the way white institutions tried to erase cultural power under the banner of salvation. Blanchett, as always, is magnetic, but it’s Aswan Reid who makes the film linger. His gaze is ancient. His silence, sacred.

The film also stars Wayne Blair and Deborah Mailman, with Thornton (known for Samson & Delilah and Sweet Country) leaning into a more restrained, elemental kind of genre—where the horror isn’t supernatural, but systemic. Still, there’s an ethereal layer here, a pulse of the uncanny, and it’s enough to make you question what power really looks like.

THE NEW BOY

🎬 Directed by: Warwick Thornton

🎭 Starring: Cate Blanchett, Aswan Reid, Wayne Blair, Deborah Mailman

📅 In Select Theaters May 23

🕯️ Faith, power, and spirit—colliding at the edge of empire

This is the kind of film that creeps in quietly and stays with you long after the lights come up. You don’t watch The New Boy—you sit with it. You feel it in your bones.