Newborn Movie Ending Explained And Full Story: Why Does Chris Want To Kill His Own Wife?

Prison is the worst, even though there aren’t dementors like Prison Mike claimed, but there’s possibly no worse place for an innocent man. From “Oz,” “Starred Up,” “Wentworth,” or even the 2025 film “Wasteman,” we’ve all seen a glimpse of how gruelling prison can be for an average person. What’s even worse is being completely innocent, only to have something even more horrific happen to you in prison, where you’re condemned to solitary confinement without access to rehabilitation programs or even the basic privileges afforded to the average inmate. Nate Parker’s “Newborn” shows us how prison breaks a person’s mind and soul, even after they’re a free man. David Oyelowo delivers a career-defining performance as the protagonist, and it has to be one of the better films to have come out this year. I am slightly mad at the makers for not completely diving into the psychological torment Oyelowo’s character goes through, and the end product seems kind of half-baked, if I’m being honest. However, here’s everything that unfolds in this latest post-prison drama. 

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the film? 

Chris and Tara are a happy couple from Brooklyn, and they’re set to marry after having lived together for a long time. He works a construction job, and she doesn’t need much for him except his love and devotion, and judging by the only scene where they’re their normal selves, they’re a great match. However, Chris also has a brother, Keith, and they were both raised by many different foster families before Chris could start earning and send Keith to college. With Keith set to go to college, Tara is excited to have their tiny apartment all to themselves, but Keith returns with horrible news. Keith is also a junkie, and he’s accidentally run over someone. That person wasn’t moving, and he just kept driving. Chris doesn’t even think twice before taking Keith’s bloody shirt and wearing it himself, as he believes that his brother deserves a shot at a happy life. Tara is heartbroken, but she can’t change Chris’ mind, and he gets charged with vehicular manslaughter. To make things worse, the prison guards accidentally kill a prisoner, and they blame the murder on Chris, so he gets a lifetime sentence in solitary. After spending seven years in the hole, with nobody but himself for company, an investigation finally sheds light on the truth, and Chris is a free man again. 

What waits for Chris outside the prison? 

Even after all these years, Tara looks at Chris the same way, and when he got arrested, she found out that they had a baby on their way. Tara raised the kid, Jake, the best way possible, despite the fact that he’s mute and he suffers horrible seizures from time to time. On their way home, Chris sees a car following them, and the man inside the car looking at him like he’s after him. When Tara takes Chris out for dinner, an attorney approaches them, asking if they want to file a lawsuit against the system—but the prison talk rubs Chris the wrong way and he shouts at the attorney. Back home, Chris learns that Jake does something called clay therapy, and he’s really good at building clay figurines as well. When Tara is out of the house, Keith comes knocking at the door, and he’s still a junkie who’s blown every opportunity Chris tried to give him. But Keith doesn’t show gratitude, instead he puts Chris down for being a great brother who is righteous and kind. We all know someone like this, so it’s not much of a shocker. Soon after, Tara decides to take Chris out on a holiday, since her friend’s husband has a nice resort in the hills which is closed for renovations. 

Is somebody stalking Chris? 

The resort the family goes to seems pretty dreamy, it’s located right by a huge lake, surrounded by pretty forests—and there’s only one guy called Hersh who is looking after the property. Hersh is a vet who lives in a cabin not far from the property, and he seems friendly to the family. Chris, however, can’t really trust him, and the fact that Tara gets along with Hersh irks him. But apart from that, Chris is getting closer and closer to his son, and Tara is pretty happy about it. However, Tara isn’t happy entirely, since Chris isn’t concerned about being intimate, and whenever she approaches him, he is unable to reciprocate. She also brings up the lawsuit, and he couldn’t care less about the possibility of bringing some money to his family for a new beginning. Chris also starts hallucinating traumatizing scenes from his time in prison, like seeing prisoners by the forest, all of whom have dark eyes, and even his little son is one of them. He also notices Hersh keeping a check on the property, which might be completely normal since Hersh handles the security, but Chris feels as if Hersh is invading his privacy. Deep into the night, Chris hears a car, and Keith has turned up at the resort. Even though Chris asks him to go away, Keith has nowhere to go, so Chris puts him up in a small room without windows to hide him from Tara. Keith reveals that some guys came to see him, and they interrogated him about Chris and his family. All Keith wants is to make sure his brother isn’t facing any crisis alone, which doesn’t sound all that bad. When Chris takes Jake hiking in the woods, he hears a gunshot, and he feels as if somebody was trying to shoot them. He ends up in Hersh’s cabin, and it looks like Hersh is quite the hunter himself, but he warns Chris not to trespass into his property, since this is not acceptable in the countryside. 

Chris tries to buy a hunting rifle to protect his family, but the shopkeeper won’t give him one without some form of ID. One would think Chris would let it be, but he instead steals a rifle and a handgun from a car—the man clearly doesn’t fear law enforcement enough, even after everything he’s been through. 

Why does Tara start fearing Chris? 

Chris takes his son to teach him how to hunt, and he sees an anonymous man looking over them. He shoots at the guy but misses, so he starts to chase the man down. But after a while, Chris remembers that he left Jake alone, and when he goes back to him, a hungry wolf is staring at the kid. Chris doesn’t have enough time to reload his rifle, so he lunges at the wolf before he can attack Jake. The wolf bites Chris’ waist, but Chris manages to stab the animal. When Tara asks if Chris is sure that the man he saw wasn’t just a hiker, Chris snaps at Tara, which takes her by surprise. Hersh pays them a visit, and he tries to offer Chris some help, since he knows that it was Chris who stole some guns the other day and then killed a wolf in the forest. There’s nobody but Hersh who hunts around the area, so Hersh tries to be the bigger man and offer Chris some grace. But instead of being grateful, Chris asks him to not come to the house until they’re gone. When Chris sees Tara taking a call away from him in the diner, he starts suspecting her, and he also gets into a fight with a couple of guys. Hersh helps Tara save Chris from the cops, but Chris is furious that she called him or that she even has his number. Keith starts to poison Chris’ mind by telling him that Tara and Hersh might be working together to get him to file the lawsuit, and they might also take Jake away from him. All Keith does is turn Chris against his own wife, who’s stood by the man for seven long years, and raised his kid. 

Tara is concerned about Chris when she sees that he’s built a little man cave for himself in the area that’s closed for renovations. When she confronts him about it, Chris is mad that she had to take the one safe space he had for himself. The man isn’t even considering that he has his wife, who’s nothing but sweet to him, all this time in the solitary cell has fried his brain so bad that he only feels safe in a little cell. Tara also can’t find her phone after this confrontation, and when she tries to text Hersh for help, the internet isn’t available either. She tries to take Jake and go to see Hersh, but the car has a flat tire, and the spare tire is ruined as well. Tara realises that something is wrong, so she goes into the surveillance room to look for an option to call Hersh. She manages to find her phone there, and by the time she charges it a little bit, Chris is outside the door. Tara also notices that Chris has chalked up an evidence board with all sorts of conspiracy theories, and he’s convinced that Tara is against him. Chris takes Jake away, and Tara gets a voicemail from Dr. Salinas, Chris’ psychiatrist from prison, who says that Tara should’ve been informed about Chris’ mental health before he left the facility. Meanwhile, Keith poisons Chris’ mind even more, and he even tells Chris that he and Tara slept together after he went to prison. 

Why Does Chris Want To Kill His Own Wife? 

Chris starts fighting Keith after he gets to know that he slept with his wife, and Jake is petrified by this. Hersh comes into the room to see that Chris is fighting nobody; there’s no one else there. Turns out, Chris was hallucinating Keith all this time, and he doesn’t actually exist. Hersh asks Jake to come with him, but as Tara enters the room, Chris shoots Hersh in the gut. Tara reveals that Keith died of an overdose a long time ago, and that Chris himself asked her to file a grievance to release him to attend Keith’s funeral, which was rejected. Keith is still inside his head, and he asks Chris to shoot Tara, but Chris tries to fight the voices, which gives Tara some time to take Jake and lock themselves inside the man cave Chris built for himself. Hersh is not dead yet, so he somehow makes it back to his car and calls the rangers for help. Meanwhile, Chris tries his best to break down the door and take his son, but Tara holds on to Jake, as the poor kid is having a seizure. Chris finally stops banging the door and accepts that he’s sick, and he asks Jake to take care of his mother. 

As Chris walks outside, the rangers have surrounded him, so he thinks about killing himself instead of going back to prison. But a miracle happens which stops him from doing so. Jake can finally talk, and as he screams out to his dad, Chris changes his mind and turns himself in. After a decade of rehabilitation, we see Chris is a free man again, and Jake is now a healthy teenager who can talk just fine. Tara is still the solid person she was, as she holds her husband’s hand to offer him a new life once again, and this time, it’ll probably be much better than before. 

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