Bad Apples review – Saoirse Ronan’s suffering teacher best thing about school horror-satire

Ronan plays a teacher who finds a way to deal with a disruptive pupil in Jonatan Etzler’s implausible film, but it’s not shocking or funny enoughHere is a strange, heavy-handed and unpersuasive black comedy which owes what success it has to the star-power of its lead, Saoirse Ronan, who is incapable of giving an uninteresting performance. Director Jonatan Etzler has adapted it with co-screenwriter Jess O’Kane from a Swedish novel by Rasmus Lindgren called De Oönskade, or The Unwanted, and is a film that asks you to overlook its plot-holes and implausibilities on the grounds that it is a satire – but a satire saying what, exactly?The scene is a primary school in the English West Country where Maria (Ronan) is a hardworking, idealistic teacher – but her class is hopelessly disrupted by a violent boy, Danny (Eddie Walker), obnoxious and out of control. He seriously injures another pupil, the nerdy teacher’s-pet Pauline (Nia Brown) whom Maria privately considers a bit annoying. After a chaotic visit to Danny’s home, Marie winds up causing the boy to lose consciousness with an accidental chokehold, and in a panic smuggles him back to her house where she imprisons him in her basement. A…

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