“The Good Nurse” Netflix movie that is unfortunately based on a true story. Charles Cullen who given drugs to patients that stopped their hearts.
The movie is now in select theatres and premiering on 26 Oct on Netflix. The film is about the healthcare system that enabled him to become possibly the most prolific serial killer in history.
The Good Nurse may present as a high-concept take on a true crime story, but it is a horror film – one that does not let us feel better because the killer has been caught.
The new Netflix crime drama The Good Nurse is directed by Tobias Lindholm. The film is based on Charles Graeber’s 2014 novel titled A Good Nurse: A Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder. In this movie, we can see how we never know what’s going on inside the mind of an individual just by looking at him and what is fueling their motivations.
But in the Netflix movie, The Good Nurse based on the true story of his grisly career as a hospital-sanctioned murderer’s focus is not on the making of Charles Cullen.
The killer nurse Cullen moved from hospital to hospital snuffing outpatients in the Garden State and Pennsylvania before pleading guilty to murdering 29 people over his 16 years in the profession. But that number is thought to be just a fraction of the real total, Charles Cullen could be responsible for up to 400 deaths between 1988 and 2003.
As we know the cause of death for Cullen’s many victims was usually an overdose of insulin and the heart medication digoxin. Cullen would administer the drugs through injections or by adding them to IV bags, the tools he used to do his job become weapons in his hand.
Photo by: Arturo Holmes
In the movie, the role of Charles Cullen is played by Eddie Redmayne and another nurse Amy Loughren played by Oscar winner Jessica Chastain was the first one who noticed that Cullen was giving an overdose of insulin and digoxin to the patients, through the saline dribs. She has two daughters Maya and Alex as shown in the film The Good Nurse.
In real Amy met Cullen who is now serving consecutive life sentences in New Jersey State Prison working as a nurse at Somerset Medical Center where he killed 13 people.
In the Movie, The Good Nurse Cullen starts a new job with Amy on the night shift at the fictional Parkfield Memorial Hospital. The unassuming Charles, who moves from low-key shift worker to a markedly unsettling presence in Eddie’s hands, might be the menace of the movie, but it’s Loughren’s health that poses a danger from the beginning.
This nurse is already fighting the specter of death in her own body when this self-appointed grim reaper shows up to further test her resolve.
Amy Loughren suffers from cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that leaves her clutching her chest in harrowing moments throughout the day.
Focusing on Loughren and her relationship with Cullen proves an effective entry point to the story.
Photo by: CARLOS OSORIO
Who is Charles Cullen and why did he kill the Patients in “The Good Nurse”
Charles Cullen who was born on 22 February 1960 is an American serial killer who confessed to murdering up to forty patients during the course of his 16-year career as a nurse in New Jersey. According to the sources, the numbers are many more than it whom he could specifically remember by name though he could often remember details of their murders.
According to the expert’s estimate, Cullen has been responsible for 400 deaths. He was born in West Orange, New Jersey. His father Edmond who was a bus driver died when Cullen was seven months old. He claimed to have been bullied by his schoolmates and sister’s boyfriends. Cullen made the first of his many suicide attempts at the age of 9 by drinking chemicals from a chemistry set.
Cullen has never told detectives or the court why he killed the patients at the hospital, but there were a lot of factors that had to be considered when finding a plausible explanation as to why he did so.
A British psychologist John Bowlby is considered to be the one who came up with the concept of the Attachment Theory, that theory states that the relationships that a child shares during their early year are the most formative ones. The bond between the child and his caregiver has a tremendous amount of impact on their lives and it also shapes the personality of the child.
Charles lost his mother when he was a teenager, to add the trauma, the hospital authorities did not inform him about the death instantly. He claimed that they cremated the body and did not give him the opportunity to see his mother for one last time.
It is possible that this event had an impact on his subconscious and made him aware of how hospitals could take advantage of the loopholes in the system and evade responsibility in the case of a patient’s death. Later in the years he used the same loophole and killed patients in multiple hospitals.
The Bottom Line
Hence the story is not about the killer The Good Nurse is the story of a woman who was willing to risk her own life and fight the system in order to save the lives of innocent patients. In the movie, Amy Loughren is a person who heroically helped to catch a serial killer. When Amy came to know that her own friend was killing innocent people who were already in so much pain, she felt devastated. Amy was ready to help the detectives in whatever manner she could. In today’s time when the world becomes so selfish, when people become so self-absorbed, we need people like Amy. Who put others before themselves and make this world a better place to live in.
