This year’s Toronto International Film Festival hosted a number of film premieres across a wide variety of genres. Several highly anticipated features were presented, particularly in the crime category. Among them was The Good Nurse, a Netflix film starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. No wonder this film has created such a buzz: both because of its terrifying yet gripping story, and the brilliant performances of its leads, two Academy Award-winners who researched and refined their characters, attending nursing school to practice with real medical professionals. On top of it all, the film is directed by Tobias Lindholm, a filmmaker with extensive experience in the genre that took part in projects such as The Mindhunter and The Investigation.
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The Good Nurse is based on the 2013 book The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder, written by Charles Graeber. Alongside Chastain and Redmayne, the Netflix film features Nnamdi Asomugha, Kim Dickens, and Noah Emmerich. The movie made its world premiere at TIFF on September 11, and is due to be released in U.S. theaters on October 19. On the 26th of the same month, it will also be available to stream on Netflix. The Good Nurse claims to be based on a true story, but is that really the case?
What is The Good Nurse About?
Netflix
The Good Nurse follows Amy (portrayed by Chastain), a nurse suffering from a heart condition and thus struggling as she splits her time between her job and responsibilities as a single mother. Fortunately, the hospital welcomes a new employee that seems to make her life a lot better: Charlie Cullen (played by Redmayne), a friendly and considerate nurse who appears to be the friend and support Amy desperately needs. As they share late-night shifts at the hospital, Amy and Charlie grow closer and closer, and their relationship deepens. However, after some unexplainable deaths that place the new nurse under the spotlight, Amy must set aside her feelings and risk her own life to uncover the truth behind Charlie’s seemingly innocent behavior.
The Real-Life Charles Cullen
Both the character played by Redmayne and the story surrounding his victims are true to life. The real Charles Cullen, just like in the movie, was a male nurse who appeared to dedicate his entire life and efforts to his patients’ well-being, up until the truth was uncovered. Born in 1960 in New Jersey, Charles had a childhood that he described as “miserable,” with several suicide attempts. As a young man, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the United States Navy, where he served for several years until he was discharged in 1984. Previously, he had been admitted several times to the Navy psychiatric hospital for mental health issues. After he left the Navy, Cullen enrolled in nursing school, and within a few years landed his first job as a healthcare provider at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.
Over the course of his 16-year career, Charles served in nine hospitals, all of which he left on bad terms, and took the lives of at least 40 patients. However, the number of victims is thought to be much higher, as he took advantage of night shifts, during which there was less surveillance, to break into patients’ rooms and give them a lethal overdose of intravenous medication. Some of his victims were terminally ill, but many others were stable or recovering patients. His final place of employment was Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ, where he was ultimately caught thanks to the cooperation of a nurse and the police. Charles Cullen was given 11 consecutive life sentences for his crimes, and he is currently serving time at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
Is Jessica Chastain’s Character Real?
Amy Loughren, played by Chastain in the film, is in many ways the real-life heroine of the story, and she was credited as the informant who helped solve the case. She was working at Somerset Medical Center when she first discovered that Charles Cullen was ordering large doses of medication that did not appear in the computerized database of the patients’ records. Through the database, she also found out that her colleague was spending time looking through histories of patients who were not under his care, and within hours, those patients died. As a result, it was possible to establish a connection between Cullen and a number of cases involving medication errors at the hospital. With these insights, Loughren alerted the police and started collaborating with them. Furthermore, she assisted them by paying an after-hours visit to the suspect while wearing a wire attempting to gather the evidence needed to arrest him.
