The Good Nurse (2022)
October 28, 2022 5:54 AM - Subscribe

An infamous caregiver is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients.
posted by ellieBOA (3 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
This hit a huge terror for me (which I suppose was part of the reason I wanted to watch it), that concept of being sick or injured and reliant upon other people and one of them is actually trying to kill you. Every time I've been in the hospital or under sedation, I've been afraid of something like that. So they definitely did a good job of building that fear and centering it around a couple of cases where we can see the individuals affected by Charlie's crimes, become personally involved in their world.

I thought Jessica Chastain did her usual excellent job--I felt her loneliness, and her sense of hopelessness as she tries to hang on in our unconscionable health system (she works at a fucking hospital saving lives! and she can't even get insurance for a year for a deadly condition!) and the profit-driven bullshit of the administration. Charlie comes in like a literal life-saving device and Amy comes alive for a brief time, and you can really feel that sense of confusion and fear and betrayal when she finds out what he's doing.

As frustrating as it is, I did appreciate that they didn't try to explain him in the end--that no one knows why, and he's not telling, and the filmmakers weren't trying to come up with pat explanations. Most of all, I think I appreciated that this is an indictment of the US's severely broken health care system and the craven, greedy people who run it. Loved seeing Kim Dickens again and she was excellent as a slimy administrator who'd pretty much decided to forget everything that made her a nurse herself in favor of bonus checks and probably a nice house and car.

Also am always happy to see Noah Emmerich, and I enjoyed the play by play with the cops and their frustration--when the one guy yells at the administrator to sit the fuck down, I'm sure a lot of us cheered inwardly (did it happen in real life? probably not, but it was cathartic). No one looks good who's in any kind of control here and with the slow build of the story, the washed-out color palette, the music, and the quiet performances, there's a nice, effective sense of dread over the whole thing--which is what living in the US is, basically.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:23 PM on October 29, 2022 [1 favorite]


Most of all, I think I appreciated that this is an indictment of the US's severely broken health care system and the craven, greedy people who run it.

Yes, watching this as British (and French) viewer I found it much harder to imagine Charlie getting away with it in 9 other hospitals in the UK.
posted by ellieBOA at 4:08 PM on October 29, 2022


This does not happen because of the healthcare system in the US. It happens because people don't think professionals would do this, especially professionals that they work with daily. Because who goes into nursing or some other caring career, just to kill people? But it definitely happens everywhere:

Pediatric nurse in England (2022)
German nurse - 85 murders (2019)
Nurse in the netherlands was convicted which was then reversed (2004)
Canada 2016
posted by LizBoBiz at 1:36 AM on November 15, 2022


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