Let’s be honest: Life is a lot better for everyone after Maria — or simply “Ms.,” as Saoirse Ronan’s character is known to the primary-age kids at the posh British school where she teaches — locks her most disruptive student in the basement of her house, chaining the boy to a wall with the help of a harness that she found on the internet by googling “how to live with an 800lb. gorilla.”
Before you judge the premise of Jonatan Etzler’s wickedly assured “Bad Apples,” a ripe and unpredictable satire about the prevailing evils of “the greater good,” please keep in mind that 10-year-old Danny (played by extraordinary newcomer Eddie Waller) is easily one of the most demonic movie kids this side of Damien, and was an obvious problem for the whole population of Ashton Brook before his sudden disappearance. Hair shaggy, uniform untucked, his face like an arrow pulled taut, Danny held back the whole class with his antics. He was constantly bullying the people around him, smashing things in the classroom, and usurping all of Maria’s energy. The day before he disappeared, he even pushed the teacher’s pet over the bannister at school. The bone of Pauline’s arm was sticking right out of her skin.
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And it’s not like Maria wanted to kidnap the boy. She only went over to his house for a welfare check, but Danny was hurt in the scuffle that ensued, and when he woke up on the way to the hospital he threatened to tell everyone that Maria had attacked him. That was just too much. All of the parents already blamed the hard-working Maria for every problem in their children’s lives (“You look like you don’t care,” one of them murmurs off-camera, indifferent to the fact that Ashton Brook won’t budget the money to get students like Danny the extra support they need), and there was just no way she was going to lose her job for the crime of trying to do it well. Besides, if one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel, then just imagine the good that Maria could do by removing it from the rest of the bunch.
Based on “De Oönskade” by the Danish author Rasmus Lindgren, and deviously scripted for the screen by Jess O’Kane, “Bad Apples” might operate with all the symbol-driven subtlety of an HBO title sequence (Danny ruins a class field trip by throwing his shoe into a cider mill during the opening scene), but the movie compensates for the obviousness of its premise by savoring the rich moral discomfort of seeing it through. The Ashton Brook community is elated that Danny has disappeared. The boy’s father, an exasperated man at the mercy of an Amazon-like delivery job that docks him for every second he so much as thinks about his son, is the only person who even wants to go through the effort of looking for him. The other kids have never been happier or more prepared for the standardized tests that will determine their futures, which means their parents are suddenly in love with Maria, and her overbearing principal is sorry for misjudging her. Even the ex who left her for another woman after they moved in together, and works as the head teacher at her school, is starting to look at Maria with new eyes. Everything is coming up roses.
And you know what? Things aren’t so bad for Danny, either. Sure, nobody wants to be trapped inside a windowless basement, but there are worse things than playing “FIFA” all day, and it isn’t long before he starts to benefit from the one-on-one lessons that Maria provides him when she gets home from work (whether dyslexic or simply neglected, he needs the kind of attention that Ashton Brook never bothered to provide). The only problem — and this might be a sticking point for some people — is that he’s a 10-year-old boy who’s been abducted by his teacher, chained to a basement wall, and forced to shit in a bucket for weeks on end.
That “Bad Apples” is so much fun to hem and haw about is a testament to Ronan’s typically excellent performance, which showcases both her low-key comic charm and also her pronounced talent for ambivalence. So credible and sympathetic that you can’t help but start to second-guess your own feelings of right and wrong, Ronan mines a wince-inducing vein of mordant humor from how clearly Maria cares about all of her students (in stark contrast to the parents, who each only care about one of them), and from how sincerely she keeps trying to make the best out of a deranged situation. There’s a part of you that hopes — and even thinks — that she might just be able to break through to Danny and strike a bargain that protects them both at the end of this.
But that wouldn’t make for much of a social commentary, and “Bad Apples” has too many diabolical tricks up its sleeve to settle for anything so predictable. In the interest of preserving the experience of watching them unfold for yourself, I’ll just say that O’Kane’s script lulls you into a schematic moment of I know where this is going, only to pull the rug out from the entire movie by revealing little Pauline (the gifted Nia Brown) as its secret weapon.
“Bad Apples” may never be quite as sharp-tongued or audacious as its cast is clearly itching for it to be, but it’s satisfying all the same to watch the film bend further towards satire as it goes along, and, crucially, to do so in a way that never loses sight of the fact that it’s about a kidnapped child. Etzler guides the story around a series of very tight corners with a steady hand and a rich eye for detail (that Maria keeps her TV on the coffee table is such an efficient display of sadness), and the plot doesn’t begin to strain the limits of believability until the situation has grown absurd enough to allow it.
Even the film’s relentless forward charge — its preference for strict point-making over a more learn at your own pace curriculum — helps to reaffirm its larger argument that schools have been conditioned to process children rather than enrich them. Obvious as that opening sequence at the cider mill might be, there’s a lingering queasiness to its Wes Anderson-like top-down shots of apples being funnelled through a big machine that shuts down the second an irregular object is thrown into the mix. That momentum — and the unwavering drive to maintain it at all costs — persists through the very last shot of this story, and begins to exert a decisive force over the course of its events as Maria and the Ashton Brook parents finally confront the Danny situation for what it is.
Whether it’s a McIntosh rolling through a mill, or a student being pushed from one grade to another, the system exists to serve its masters with efficiency, and there are precious few rewards for anyone who slows it down in order to pay special attention to one of its products. It works by making collective interest and self-interest seem like one and the same, until even the people we trust with our children are convinced that removing a problem might be easier than solving it. They say it takes a village to raise a child. The shrewd, pointed, and comically unforgiving “Bad Apples” suggests that it also takes a village to leave one behind.
Grade: B+
“Bad Apples” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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