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Any hospital stay can be nerve-wracking—no matter what the reason. When you’re surrounded by beeping machines and mysterious liquids and a whole lot of doctors and nurses and (worst of all) other sick people, it’s a pretty trying experience. After seeing Orlando Bloom’s twisted medical thriller, The Good Doctor, though, you might find it downright terrifying.
Dr. Martin Blake (Bloom) is a new resident on a mission. He’s eager and ambitious and absolutely desperate to get approved for a prestigious infectious diseases fellowship. But he just doesn’t seem to get the respect that he feels he deserves—especially from one of the hospital’s nurses, Theresa (Taraji P. Henson), who seems to have it in for him. And after an error causes one of his patients to have a serious allergic reaction, things start to look pretty grim for the determined young doctor.
But then he meets Diane (Riley Keough), a pretty teenage patient who likes him and respects him and actually improves under his careful supervision. Martin quickly becomes attached to his patient—so much so that, when his treatment works and she starts getting better, he considers taking steps to keep her around.
Eerie and haunting from beginning to (almost) end, The Good Doctor is a quietly suspenseful thriller that revolves around a fascinating main character.
Bloom’s Dr. Blake is the kind of guy about whom people often say, “He was such a nice, quiet man. Who knew that he was capable of something like that?” On the surface, he’s just that: a nice, quiet guy who seems focused on his work and devoted to his patients. Though he generally keeps to himself—and he lives a quiet, solitary life—he’s polite and charming when he needs to be. Deep down, however, there’s something much darker going on. And his desperation to be liked and respected—and to succeed—drives him to do the unthinkable.
This dark drama is delightfully disturbing on so many levels—from Martin’s unhealthy (and downright creepy) attachment to his (very young) patient to the lengths to which he’s willing to go to keep from losing her. The deeper you get into the story, the darker and more twisted it becomes—and it continues to spiral out of control, getting increasingly more complicated along the way.
As the suspense continues to build, then, you might find yourself eagerly awaiting an appropriately dark and twisted conclusion. Unfortunately, though, the film crumbles in the end. In fact, at times, it becomes so ridiculous that you might even laugh out loud—and this just isn’t the kind of movie that should make its audience laugh.
The Good Doctor is a film with so much promise. The concept is intriguing, and the tone is perfectly dark and disturbing. If it weren’t for a few scenes toward the end of the film, it would be an eerie success. But the overabundance of awkwardness at the end is guaranteed to leave audiences feeling far from satisfied.
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