Bad Apples
Director – Jonatan Etzler – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 100m
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A teacher deals with a disruptive student by kidnapping him and locking him in her basement – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th
A school trip to an apple processing factory goes badly wrong when a trainer shoe appears among the apples on the system of conveyor belts. While the other children tour the factory premises in a comparatively orderly manner under their teacher Miss Spencer (Saoirse Ronan), loner Danny (Eddie Waller) stands at the railing with one trainer missing.
The setting is Somerset. Not that you’d know. A whole potential Somerset metaphor about apples and bad apples and brewing sits in waiting, but that either never occurred to screenwriter Jess O’Kane when adapting the film from the Swedish source, the novel by De Oönskade / The Undesirables by Rasmus Lindgren (2020), or it got abandoned in an early draft. Or perhaps the director Etzler threw it out during shooting. A pity either way, because that idea has real potential.
Back at school, Miss Spencer is hauled over the coals by her superior Sylvia (Rakie Ayola).
At home, Maria Spencer plays video games – her refuge from her job.… Read the rest