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This is perhaps the biggest true-crime story told on film yet. Nurse Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) may be the most prolific serial killer in history, possibly killing as many as 400 patients in his 16-year career. Enabled by hospital administrators who failed to expose him, Cullen would have gone to kill more were it not for the heroic effort of his fellow nurse and best friend Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) who got him to confess. In the disturbing true-crime thriller The Good Nurse, we learn just how extraordinary Loughren’s heroism is. A single mom struggling to raise her two daughters on a nurse’s salary, Loughren has the additional burden of a severely ailing heart, hiding her cardiomyopathy from her hospital employers to keep her job long enough to earn her health insurance benefit. She endangers her health and job anyway when detectives enlist her help in investigating her good friend Cullen for suspicious deaths in the hospital.
Her heart at risk of stopping at any minute, she takes on the heart-stopping role of spy, staying dangerously close to her serial killer friend while she investigates how he is killing patients in a hospital determined to keep its secrets. In Charles Graeber’s book The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder on which the film is based, a deeply conflicted, wire-tapped Loughren asks herself: “Who is she? A friend? A spy?” In the end, she is the good nurse who risks her own safety to save lives. Here's everything you need to know about the Netflix film.
What Is The Good Nurse About?
The official synopsis reads:
Amy, a compassionate nurse and single mother struggling with a life-threatening heart condition, is stretched to her physical and emotional limits by the hard and demanding night shifts at the ICU. But help arrives when Charlie, a thoughtful and empathetic fellow nurse, starts at her unit. While sharing long nights at the hospital, the two develop a strong and devoted friendship, and for the first time in years, Amy truly has faith in her and her young daughters’ future. But after a series of mysterious patient deaths sets off an investigation that points to Charlie as the prime suspect, Amy is forced to risk her life and the safety of her children to uncover the truth.
Watch The Good Nurse Trailer
The trailer begins and ends with Loughren meeting with her serial killer friend Cullen in a diner, trying to act friendly and cool, all the while trying to make him confess his crimes. “I don’t want to talk about work,” says the furtive Cullen, to which Loughren asks, “Is it because what they’re saying is true?” The meeting is beyond awkward as the trailer shows just how high the stakes are. Loughren is a single mother barely able to pay her babysitter and Cullen is her empathetic and helpful friend, so close that he freely visits Loughren’s home and young daughters. Her already challenging life turns outright harrowing when the hospital administrator introduces her to detectives Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich) and Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) who tell her about Cullen’s involvement in the suspicious death of a patient. He is spiking the saline bags with lethal doses of insulin, Loughren soon discovers.
From then on, Loughren plays a cat and mouse game where the stressed-out cat is in way over her head and the mouse is exceedingly clever and silent. “He’s been killing people without ever touching them,” says detective Baldwin. “He’s gonna get a new job and it’s all going to continue.” It becomes clear that all hopes of catching Cullen depend on Loughren because law enforcers need evidence that the hospital will not provide. “The hospital would have done something,” Loughren says incredulously. To which the detective chillingly replies, “You would think so.”
When Is the Release Date of The Good Nurse?
The Good Nurse will be released in theaters on October 19, 2022, and on Netflix a week later, on October 26, 2022. The film premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was noted for Chastain’s ticking time-bomb portrayal of Loughren, Redmayne’s chilling embodiment of Cullen, and director Tobias Lindholm’s commitment to showing not just Cullen’s crimes but the insidious practice of hospitals that prioritize profits over patients’ lives. You can use the following link to check out the movie's landing page on Netflix and it to your watchlist.
Who Are the Cast and Crew of The Good Nurse?
Leading the cast are two Academy Award-winning actors who won their Oscars for portraying real-life characters. Jessica Chastain, who plays Amy Loughren, won her first Oscar for portraying televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Eddie Redmayne, who plays Charles Cullen, won his first Oscar for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Not an ardent fan of sensational true crime, Chastain tells Vanity Fair that she preferred to keep things real in The Good Nurse: “There have been a lot of shows and movies about true-crime events that I find could be a bit vulgar—there’s a sensationalism of violence and of aggression.” Instead, Chastain says, “I wanted to acknowledge someone like Amy. She’s the kind of superhero that I want to celebrate because they’re everywhere.”
In order to prepare for their roles, Chastain and Redmayne reportedly practiced nursing and watched footage of their real-life counterparts. To capture the odd posture and mannerisms of Cullen, Redmayne worked with movement coach Alexandra Reynolds, whom he also worked with on The Theory of Everything. The results are, by all accounts, a complete transformation. To play the heroic nurse whose heart could give out at any time, Chastain reportedly wore an earpiece during production playing the sound of a heartbeat, which she would ask to be turned up when her character was in physical danger.
Apart from the two leads, Noah Emmerich (The Americans) and Nnamdi Asomugha (Sylvie’s Love) play dogged detectives Tim Braun and Danny Baldwin who take the chance of enlisting Loughren despite her friendship with Cullen. Kim Dickens (Gone Girl) is also earning praise for her icy performance as the callous hospital’s risk officer.
The Good Nurse is helmed by acclaimed Danish director Tobias Lindholm. He is best known for directing the films A Hijacking (2012) and A War (2015), as well as the true-crime series An Investigation about Kim Wall, the Swedish journalist who was murdered aboard a submarine. Lindholm was nominated for an Oscar for directing A War. While directing The Good Nurse, Lindholm reportedly steered away from the salacious details of Cullen’s crimes, focusing instead on the people at the heart of the story. The Good Nurse was written by Krysty Wilson-Cairn (Last Night in Soho) and produced by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Scott Franklin, and Michael A. Jackman.