Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jonatan Etzler
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eddie Waller, Jacob Anderson, Rakie Ayola, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder, Kerry Howard
The school classroom is a microcosm of society. It requires a strong leader in a teacher who can ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction. All it takes is one bad apple to disrupt the whole system. When I think back to my school days there were some teachers who knew exactly how to make us behave, and others who simply weren't cut out for the job. The latter's classes were anarchic, with half the class time devoted to trying to corral the little monsters who recognised weakness in their teachers. The sad thing is, most of these teachers would probably have been perfectly good teachers if they were allowed to simply teach rather than having to play a psychological cat and mouse game with budding sociopaths.
In Bad Apples, Saoirse Ronan plays one such teacher. Maria is an Irish teacher in a primary school in England's West Country. She is well-liked by her pupils, except for Danny (Eddie Waller), a disruptive force who destroys everything in his path. With Maria unable to control Danny, the rest of her pupils are suffering, something that hasn't gone unnoticed by her principal (Rakie Ayola), who repeatedly issues Maria with warnings to get things under control.
When Danny pushes his classmate Pauline (Nia Brown) down some stairs, breaking the girl's arm in the process, the school fails to take action and Maria becomes the scapegoat. With a school inspector scheduled to arrive the following day, Maria decides to take drastic action to get Danny out of the picture. Like Stephen Graham in the similarly themed recent drama The Good Boy, Maria abducts Danny and chains the boy up in her basement.
It's not surprising that with Danny no longer around to cause disruption, Maria's class begins to excel. The inspector raves about Maria and she suddenly finds herself in the principal's good books. Danny himself begins to turn a new leaf, as Maria privately tutors the boy in her basement. All is going well until Pauline, who adores Maria, begins to snoop around.
Bad Apples is written and directed by two former teachers in Jess O'Kane and Jonatan Etzler. Their insight can be seen in how palpable Maria's stress is when it comes to dealing with Danny. But much of this movie would have you believe it was made by filmmakers who have no idea how schools actually function. There is simply too much here that is impossible to swallow, real world logic too often sacrificed for plot convenience. For a start, are we really to believe that a British school in 2026 would simply brush off a male pupil physically assaulting a female classmate? In reality, Pauline's parents would probably sue the school for all its worth. Our suspension of disbelief is further tested by how easily Maria is able to keep Danny under control in her basement. How, for example, was she able to subdue a child with the ferocity of a bobcat in order to be able to strap him into a harness and chain him to the wall? Unlike Stephen Graham's kidnapper in The Good Boy, Maria doesn't use any drugs on her victim. It all gets really ridiculous in the final act, with a plot turn that will have viewers rolling their eyes.
What makes Bad Apples such a mess is that it's a satire that plays like a social realist drama for too much of its running time. It initially creates a relatable setup only to destroy the illusion with increasing absurdity. It's adapted from a Swedish novel by author Rasmus Lindgren and directed by a Swede in Etzler, and it plays like a conflicting mix of British social realism and the Scandi-satires of filmmakers like Kristoffer Borgli and Ruben Ostlund. The two flavours just don't go together. Bad Apples needs to choose a lane: either play up the absurdism from the off or keep it grounded.
As frustrating as Bad Apples is, it's also highly watchable. This is thanks almost exclusively to two dynamite performances by Ronan and her young co-star Brown. Both actresses pull off the tricky act of selling the absurdism of the situation while also coming off as relatably real characters. Ronan is such an affable screen presence that we find ourselves rooting for Maria throughout, even though we know her actions are morally objectionable. Brown is a revelation in how she portrays the sadness of a teacher's pet whose affections are unrequited. She's also genuinely scary when realises that she has the power to blackmail and manipulate Maria. It's this manipulative dynamic between Pauline and Maria that provides most of Bad Apples' laughs, but the movie could have made a lot more of this twisted relationship, and I imagine a Scandinavian take on this setup would have gotten a lot darker.
Bad Apples is in UK/ROI cinemas from September 18th.
