The much-awaited movie The Good Nurse was finally released on October 26, Wednesday on global OTT giant Netflix. Ever since its release, The Good Nurse has been receiving positive reviews from fans who are also eager to know whether it was a real story or not. The Good Nurse has a stellar star cast of Academy Award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne and Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Chastain among others. Directed by Tobias Lindholm, The Good Nurse is expected to be another blockbuster on Netflix in the upcoming days. Courtesy of its widely acclaimed star cast, The Good Nurse has started buzzing on the day of its release. With the story revolving around nurses and doctors, fans are wondering whether The Good Nurse is a true story or The Good Nurse is a real story or not.
The answer to this question is a big yes. The Good Nurse is a true story based on nurse Amy Loughren who helped the Police capture her co-worker, Charles Cullen who became a suspect in the mysterious killing of several patients. While actress Jessica Chastain is portraying the character of nurse Amy Loughren, Eddie Redmayne has portrayed a negative character and plays the role of the infamous killer Charles Cullen. For the unversed, 'real' Charles Cullen is currently serving 18 consecutive life sentences in prison for the deaths of 29 patients, however, authorities believe he is behind the deaths of 400 patients.
Furthermore, Netflix's true crime film is based on the real case as well as Charles Graeber's book - The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder, which is focused on Cullen's life, as well as insight from Loughren herself.
About Charles Cullen
Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer who confessed to murder up to 40 patients during the course of his sixteen-year career as a nurse in New Jersey. However, in subsequent interviews with police, psychiatrists, and journalists, it became apparent that he had killed many more, whom he could not specifically remember by name though he could often remember details of their murders.
Charles Cullen was born in New Jersey in 1960 and he was the youngest of eight siblings. Cullen's father was a bus driver who died before he turned a year old, and his mother, a homemaker, died in a car accident when he was a teenager. Eventually, he became a nurse, graduating from nursing school in 1987 before getting married. He and his wife had two daughters before getting a divorce in 1993. Reportedly, Cullen would go on to work in several hospitals and nursing homes. Some jobs he quit after being investigated over allegations of misconduct - on one occasion because an elderly woman complained he kept coming into her room and giving her injections when he wasn't the nurse assigned to her.
Between 1998 and 2002, he did some agency work and had some full-time jobs. In this time, he is believed to have killed many people. His weapon of choice was a drug called digoxin - a medication routinely used to treat people with an irregular heartbeat or heart failure - but is lethal in large doses. Cullen would also inject patients' saline pouches with lethal doses of insulin and other drugs. His crimes were committed over a period of 16 years - but it was in 2003 while he was working at Somerset Medical Centre in Somerville, New Jersey, that it would all finally unravel.
Why Charles Cullen murdered patients?
As per the information available, Cullen stated that he had administered overdoses to patients to spare them from being "coded," or going into cardiac or respiratory arrest and being listed as a Code Blue emergency. He had told detectives that he could not bear to witness or to hear about attempts at saving a victim's life. Cullen also stated that he gave patients overdoses so that he could end their suffering and prevent hospital personnel from dehumanizing them. However, not all of his victims were terminal patients.
Among the many true stories, The Good Nurse is considered to be Netflix's another masterstroke after Dahmer which broke the viewership numbers worldwide. Therefore, for those who like watching a thriller based on real life, The Good Nurse is the perfect movie to watch on Netflix.