We were poked and troubled with the presentation of a twisted scripted tale already - when the book-turned-movie The Good Nurse came out back in September 2022. And now, Netflix seems to be taking it a step further with a documentary behind the true story of the nurse-cum-murderer. The trailer of the documentary titled Capturing the Killer Nurse is out and it promises a bone-chilling detailed explanation of what went into realizing that a nurse could actually be killing people and then finally capturing him.
The nurse's co-worker Amy Loughren, who was the whistle-blower to the crime as she walked in on him while he was at his 'job', frames the narrative for the documentary in the trailer. And it ends with an eerie confession by Charles - 'I felt like I was helping people.'
Damn, we seem to be in for a ride after what Netflix did to us with the movie already. The Good Nurse is a thriller based on the true story of Charles Cullen, America's most prolific serial killer.
The movie is set in 2003. the first scene shows Amy Loughren the ICU nurse’s character perfectly. As she lets an elder man who is visiting his wife stay overnight, despite it not being allowed in the hospital, she is shown to be a good, kind and sympathetic nurse. We later see that Amy is a single mom of two little girls. She is also suffering from cardiomyopathy, a disease that affects her heart. She does not let anyone at the hospital know about her condition as she doesn't have insurance and needs to complete one year at the said hospital to get health insurance.
When newcomer Charles Cullen joins the hospital Amy is friendly to him and soon we find out that he is quite similar to her as he also has two daughters, but they live with their mom.
As the movie goes on we see patient Ana Martinez, who Cullen took care of, die without a cause. The hospital then does a 7-week poorly conducted an internal investigation and then asks the police to do another outside investigation. We can see very clearly that the hospital is doing everything not to taint its name, they don't cooperate with the police and don't give the full internal investigation report.
The police find out that Charles Cullen has a charge of harassment and trespassing, although the charge was dropped, detective Danny Baldwin gets very suspicious of him. During questioning with the entire ICU staff the detectives don't want the risk manager, Linda Garran to sit in the questioning saying “no one will talk if their boss is present'' but while questioning Amy, Linda has to step off for a few minutes and the detectives seize this time to ask Amy if she sees any error in the patients' medicines. Amy notices that the patient was given insulin which may have caused her to die, and when asked about Charles Cullen, Amy defends him by saying that the patient died during the day shift that Cullen works the night shift and that he is a very good nurse.
As the movie goes on we see another patient die and we also see Amy slowly grow suspicious of Cullen and figure out that it was indeed him who killed both patients. In fact, it is Amy who gets Cullen to confess at the end of the movie.
The actors brought the movie to life, especially Eddie Redmayne who plays Charles Cullen and Jessica Chastain who plays Amy Loughren really give an amazing and impactful performance. Director Tobias Lindholm also does an impressive job of making the film a hit, so much so that he even made his stars attend nursing school, I mean that's dedication!!
This is a movie based on real events, the only thing which was changed was the names of the patients so as not to retraumatize the families of those patients. Amy now lives in Florida after getting the heart surgery she needed with her children and grandchildren. As for Cullen, he is serving 11 life sentences and won't be eligible for parole till 2403. In his 16 years of working as a nurse, Cullen is believed to have killed about 400 people, although he only admitted to killing 29.
With the documentary all set to make its way to our screens on November 11, we seem to be for yet another horrific narration of the events.
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