SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk!
Despite the recently ignited fascination about the origin stories of the villains, especially with the success of projects like ‘Joker’, ‘Maleficent’, and ‘Hannibal’, it remains a risky gambit, as it can be construed as an unwarranted intrusion into well-established mythology. So, when it was announced that Ryan Murphy (‘Glee’, ‘American Horror Story’) is making a Netflix series about a younger Mildred Ratched, the cruel and despotic head nurse from multiple Oscar-winning 1975 drama ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, which, in turn, was based on the 1962 namesake novel by Ken Kesey, it raised quite a few skeptical eyebrows. While the film is a somber and harrowing tale about a group of patients in a psychiatric ward and the casual cruelty they suffer in the hands of the nurses and orderlies, ‘Ratched’ is a fun, pulpy, Hitchcockian over-indulgence that keeps you perpetually shocked and at the edge of your seat. SPOILERS AHEAD.