Film Review: The Good Nurse

Director: Tobias Lindholm
Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Jessica Chastain, Nnamdi Asomugha, Noah Emmerich
Running time: 121 minutes

Based on the novel The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder by Charles Graeber, and the real-life events that preceded the novel, Tobias Lindholm’s The Good Nurse brings the story to the big screen. Known previously for being a writer rather than director, Lindholm manages to deliver the unspoken truth that systemic failures are often to blame in cases like this one. The film captures the crimes and arrest of the serial killer Charles Cullen (played by Eddie Redmayne), with a serious tonal approach. The Good Nurse tackles difficult themes of murder and justice without sensationalising the crimes in the manner we usually expect in true crime reproductions of this kind. 

The opening scene establishes an ICU ward in St Aloysius hospital in Pennsylvania in 1996, where a patient suffers from a seizure and dies. The narrative then jumps forward seven years, but this opening scene garners relevance as the film progresses. In the present day, Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) is a nurse in New Jersey and single mother of two young girls. Her life takes a turn when she is diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, and is told she will need a heart transplant. However, she is prompted to keep her condition a secret from hospital administration due to the physical demands of her job and her lack of health insurance. 

She is introduced to Cullen, a nurse recruited by the hospital to whom she reveals her secret. Cullen empathetically takes on this burden and enters Amy’s personal life as a childminder for her daughters. Detectives Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich) are brought into the scene following a suspicious death which is downplayed by the hospital’s risk manager. Throughout, the detectives remain rigorous in the pursuit of justice, convinced that the hospital board are covering up a scandal. Following a second unexplained death in the ward, Amy discovers that insulin had been administered to the patient and she joins forces with the detectives to uncover the truth. 

Throughout the film, the portrayal of Cullen as a serial killer avoids conventional horror tropes; he never appears mentally compromised, and rather maintains a reliable and down-to-earth character. This affectation is demonstrated during his friendship with Amy, to whom he becomes a dependable figure. Only when Amy confronts him directly about the murders do the cracks begin to show in his character, as he responds violently to the accusation. By largely avoiding the glamorisation of the role of the serial killer in this film, it creates a more respectable, and arguably more ethical, dramatisation of the events. The Good Nurse builds suspense through Amy’s discovery of Cullen’s crimes, rather than depictions of the crimes themselves. 

If anything, I think the crimes are backgrounded by the film’s commentary on the US healthcare system and the way it enabled Cullen to get away with his murders. He worked at nine hospitals before his recruitment at the ICU ward in New Jersey, his nursing career spanning sixteen years in which it is speculated that he could have killed up to 400 patients. You may be wondering: how, then, did he get away with it for so long? 

The answer is: hospitals in the US are private sector businesses and so function as businesses. Hospital administrators don’t want bad press surrounding their hospital and would lose money through being sued, so in the case of Cullen it would be more economical to fire and relocate a murderer instead of admitting that murders had occurred. The Good Nurse foregrounds this reality of corruption by almost making the healthcare system an agent in the crimes as much as Cullen was. This is mostly executed by the villainous portrayal of the hospital’s risk manager, Linda Garran (Kim Dickens), especially when you consider that Cullen’s crimes were never shown on screen but Garran’s unethical actions were. 

The Good Nurse is far more than the conventional true crime thriller you may expect. Although not packed with action scenes, Lindholm manages to maintain suspense by using Amy’s character as a vehicle of discovery in the aftermath of Cullen’s murders and the facilitation of them through the hospital’s corruption. This film stands out in the true crime scene for its unromanticised portrayal of a prolific serial killer and its focus on systemic issues.

Did you know? This is the first English language movie directed by Tobias Lindholm.

The Good Nurse is now available on Netflix