MOVIE REVIEW – Modern audiences have become increasingly voracious regarding their appetite for content revolving around notorious serial killers, unsolved cases and long-standing mysteries, whether it’s feature films, episodic series, documentaries or podcasts. The sensationalism and rare depiction of horror elements can often be used as a crutch, but Netflix’s upcoming true-life thriller The Good Nurse (out 26 October) wisely focuses on the bigger picture rather than the horrific crimes themselves – which is the film’s enormous benefit.

Director Tobias Lindholm’s slow-moving blend of character-driven drama, investigative procedure and unsettling look at the damage caused by turning a blind eye could have taken the easy way out and focused most of his attention on the shocking atrocities committed by Charles Cullen, a nurse convicted of killing 29 patients in a 16-year career working in US hospitals.

But experts say he could be responsible for up to 400 deaths, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. While such attention-grabbing sound bites could be used as mass marketing hooks to build a story that satisfies viewers’ appetite for morbid tales, The Good Nurse lives because it is more of a “why did they let this happen?” rather than “how did she get away with it?”.

Great script and two brilliant performances

It helps immensely that the screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns, nominated for an Academy Award for 1917, is measured, thoughtful and often heartbreaking without being anything short of cheesy or overwrought, while the two central performances – Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren and Eddie Redmayne as Cullen – are as riveting as you would expect from an Oscar-winning pair who can delve into such heavy material.

Lindholm sets the scene from the first scene, even if you don’t know the case details. In an increasingly harrowing long take, as various medical workers rush in to try to save the life of a pathological patient desperately, the camera slowly pulls in on Redmayne. He may have been the one who called for help in the first place, but his expression becomes increasingly blank as the shot approaches, an unsettling introduction to a man who has mastered the art of not letting his guard down when people are watching him.

A strange friendship, police investigation and deep corruption

From here, we get to know Chastain’s single mother. She is desperately trying to reconcile her family life with the trials and tribulations of her daily work in the ward, not to mention her potentially life-threatening heart condition, which is taking its toll on her both physically and emotionally. When Redmayne’s Charlie starts on the same shift, she sees him as a kind of godsend, having helped lighten his load on both fronts, so much so that he is quickly welcomed into her family.

It seems perfectly aware that a suspiciously large number of patients have died mysteriously. At the same time, the police investigate a series of unexplained deaths, but they are blocked by the hospital’s management and their lawyers. Senior management is refusing to provide documents to help the investigation. Still, with the threat of legal prosecution, if anything were to come to light or admitted, they have sworn the health system to silence in a damning indictment.

However, Noah Emmerich and Nnamdi Asomugha’s tenacious cops won’t give up without a fight. The two threads of the story finally come together when it is revealed that no one at Charlie’s previous jobs is willing to talk or reveal any details about his residency or departure. Amy’s worst fears become increasingly realized when she reconnects with a former colleague, who tells her that the body count dropped dramatically when her new best friend moved on.

The charm of the killer and the charisma of the nurse in distress

Redmayne has always had a charisma and charm that is both energetic and intelligent (which we have seen in the Legendary Beasts series) and also an underlying sense of innocence – precisely what makes his role so haunting, so uncanny. Even when the walls begin to close around him, the facade of the well-situated and helpful professional remains firmly in place, but when the mask slips – the outbursts of emotion, anger and rage are jarring. Whether intentional or not, there’s definitely a Norman Bates vibe, the actor proving increasingly unpleasant and annoying as his double life comes to the surface while resolutely refusing to break out of character as the happy-go-lucky Charlie.

Chastain also has an excellent partner who portrays Amy as a strong-willed and steadfastly resilient force: a person who always barely manages to stay afloat as she plunges headlong into an unfathomable situation where her health, well-being, career, friends and family are threatened. While Amy herself finds herself in a life-threatening situation – in more ways than one – she is even more dramatically threatened by the fact that an increasingly desperate killer is destroying everything she knows and loves.

Some of the strong actings may be too much for some, and one scene towards the end veers heavily into a rip-roaring, to the point where it could become the next Nicolas Cage-level meme of the internet. Still, when you put an Oscar-winning couple in the middle of a harrowing drama of unspeakable events, dialogue with occasional kitschy pathos, occasionally over-the-top performances or navel-gazing social introspection are inevitable parts of such a film.

The movie tried to grab too much

Perhaps the biggest mistake of The Good Nurse is that it tried to grab too much; therefore, the medical thriller and the thrills that go with it were pushed into the background. As well as cleverly focusing on the key characters, the film also takes aim at the American economy, the bureaucracy of the medical industry and the fact that the capitalist aspect of life-saving (or, in this case, killing) treatments is that they almost by definition come at the expense of the human factor. These are all exciting and worthwhile themes, of course, but it is not so lucky when a thriller is all of these things that the tension that is the cornerstone of the genre is compromised, and unfortunately, this is often the case here.

-BadSector-