In ‘Good Nurse,’ a serial killer exposes well being care system

NEW YORK (AP) — Charles Cullen is by some estimates essentially the most prolific serial killer in American historical past. However when Krysty Wilson-Cairns started writing the script about his seize, she began not with Cullen, who was sentenced to consecutive life sentences in 2006, however outdoors the house of Amy Loughren, the nurse who first uncovered his crimes.

“I turned up at the actual Amy’s home in upstate New York,” Wilson-Cairns, the Scottish screenwriter, recollects. “I believe I used to be 23 or 24. I used to be like: ‘I’ve by no means achieved this earlier than. It’s actually vital to me. It’s your life story. Are you able to assist me?’”

“The Good Nurse,” which debuts Wednesday on Netflix, takes a intentionally totally different method to the true-crime thriller. The story of Cullen, who admitted killing 29 victims however is believed to have killed greater than 300 hospital sufferers whereas working as a nurse in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, might simply be the form of sensationalist serial-killer tales that populate streaming providers.

However, director Tobias Lindholm and Wilson-Cairns, drawing considerably from Charles Graeber’s forensically researched 2013 e book, “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder,” wished to focus their movie on Loughren and greater questions in regards to the U.S. well being care system raised by Cullen’s 16 years of undetected homicide.

“I noticed the potential of doing a serial killer in a means that we had by no means seen it earlier than, the place we wouldn’t be seduced by why is he doing this or how broken is he as an individual, however take a step again and have a look at why and the way would we permit for this to go on,” says Lindholm. “He’s not, in my thoughts, Hannibal Lecter. It’s not this sensible thoughts. It’s a reasonably easy man doing a reasonably easy factor, however a system permitting it.”

“The Good Nurse,” which debuted on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, stars Jessica Chastain as Loughren and Eddie Redmayne as Cullen. In pairing the two Oscar-winners and good friends for the first time, “The Good Nurse” trades on their pure chemistry collectively. Loughren befriends the lately employed Cullen. Transferring from hospital to hospital, Cullen was simply capable of cowl up his deadly poisoning of sufferers in intravenous fluids — thanks, the e book and film recommend, to for-profit hospitals protecting up potential legal responsibility.

“This case asks us if it’s a good suggestion that persons are creating wealth from different folks’s well being,” says Lindholm. “Is it a good suggestion that hospitals are companies?”

Adapting “The Good Nurse” was Wilson-Cairns first job for rent some 10 years in the past. Since then, she’s co-authored a pair of high-profile tasks: “1917,” with Sam Mendes, and “Final Night time in Soho,” with Edgar Wright. Her journey to go to Loughren was simply her second time in America. To analysis the movie, she spent two weeks shadowing nurses at a Connecticut hospital.

“What I discovered is that the precise well being care suppliers — the medical doctors, the nurses, the radiologists, the anesthesiologists — all these persons are unimaginable and are heroic,” says Wilson-Cairns. “They put their lives in a field to allow them to assist save different folks. I don’t suppose any of them are paid sufficient. I believe even at 10 instances, these nurses aren’t paid sufficient. I discovered that the system they’re compelled to work inside isn’t one of the best for affected person care.”

Making “The Good Nurse” was briefly postponed when Lindholm, the Danish author of the acclaimed movies “One other Spherical” and “The Hunt,” went off to make the six-part miniseries “The Investigation,” about the death of Swedish journalist Kim Wall. Chastain and Redmayne remained dedicated to creating the movie with Lindholm, drawn to his naturalistic method.

Chastain, following up her Academy Award-winning performance in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” leaned on conversations with Loughren, a single mom. She responded notably to how Loughren labored as a nurse via her arrhythmia. Earlier than capturing a scene, Chastain would jog round set to get her coronary heart charge up. She additionally wore an ear piece with a coronary heart beat that might speed up in the course of a scene.

“She labored nights so her daughters felt like she was a stay-at-home mother. That’s what she stored saying, that her youngsters noticed her once they had been awake,” Chastain says. “The concept that this girl would threat her well being with a view to present for her kids and in addition threat her consolation by not getting the sleep she wanted, it instructed me a lot about who she was and what she was able to.”

Redmayne, moving into darker territory than he’s identified for, drew on footage of Cullen from his courtroom appearances and from “60 Minutes” to construct a efficiency that eluded typical serial killer stereotypes. In Graeber’s e book, Cullen is described as “a tragic Mr. Rogers sort, each drippy and depressed.”

“There was one thing in his physicality that was fascinating to me,” Redmayne says. “He’s a really nonetheless man. However in the event you truly look shut, you’ll see he’s at all times soothing himself. I don’t know if soothing is the suitable phrase, however touching materials. There’s at all times one thing shifting. The man was a horrendously broken human being and that concept of searching for consolation was fascinating to me.”

Most encouraging to Wilson-Cairns is seeing Loughren, 10 years after she sheepishly knocked on her door, be celebrated for what she did. At the film’s premiere in Toronto, Loughren fought again tears throughout a standing ovation.

“This girl simply wasn’t acknowledged for what she did,” says Wilson-Cairns. “Folks don’t consider unusual girls as these form of heroes. They’re not on screens, they’re not within the media, they’re not in books sufficient. To see the actual Amy lastly be acknowledged in a small means for what she did – which is save numerous lives – I believed: That’s not a foul method to spend a decade. I’d do this once more.”

___

Observe AP Movie Author Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP