Bad Apples

Premise

Maria Spencer (Ronan) is a teacher at a primary school in Somerset, England, finding her class of ten-year-olds disrupted by one unruly pupil and, after an escalation of events, kidnaps the boy and locks him in her basement where she cares for him herself while he is searched for by the authorities.

Cast

Saoirse Ronan as Maria Spencer

Eddie Waller as Danny

Nia Brown as Pauline

Jacob Anderson as Sam

Rakie Ayola as Sylvia

Robert Emms as Josh

Sean Gilder as Frank

Kerry Howard as PC Williams

Euan Shanahan as PC Chadwick

Jaye Jacobs

Production

Bad Apples is written by Jess O'Kane and adapted from the Swedish-language debut novel De Oönskade by Rasmus Lindgren/Rasmus Andersson, with Swedish director Jonatan Etzler making his English-language debut after his 2023 debut film One More Time for Netflix. The film was produced by Pulse Films and executive produced by Judy Counihan and Jamie Hall for Pulse Films, Philip Knatchbull, Marc Smit, Paul Wiegard and Kristian Brodie for CCM, and Paul Grindey and Charles Moore for Viewfinder Film and was developed in a partnership with the Curzon CM Development Fund. Etzler, who had been a teacher himself, said that he was "really struck" with the moral dilemma of the novel while reading it and wanted to adapt it as a film. His agent then found a producer interested who suggested screenwriter Jess O'Kane, who also similarly was a teacher herself. Etzler said that he exchanged the novel's Swedish setting for Southern England because he thought that the school systems of Sweden and the United Kingdom were similar dysfunctional and because the two countries shared a similar dark sense of humor.

Saoirse Ronan signed on to lead the cast in October 2023. According to Etzler, Ronan was the only actor he had in mind for the role and identified her as "sympathetic as a person" and "one of the greatest actors of her generation". After having been sent for, Ronan quickly responded within a week with Etzler saying that she was "keen on doing it because it’s not her usual character to play. She’s been playing a lot of good-hearted people. I think she was very keen on playing an unsympathetic character." Co-star Eddie Waller from Northern England had no prior acting experience before he had been discovered by casting director Fiona Weir.

Principal photography took place in Bristol and the surrounding areas, beginning on March 19, 2024, and took 32 days. The film was shot on location in a real school and used teacher consultants and the basement was a studio set designed by production designer Jacqueline Abrahams. Director of photography was Nea Harnebrandt Asphäll, and the film was edited by Robert Krantz with music by Chris Roe.

Release

In June 2024, Paramount Pictures' Republic Pictures label acquired the distribution rights to the film.

Bad Apples premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2025. It also opened the San Sebastián International Film Festival that same month, competing in the "New Directors" competition, and was also selected for the "Official Competition" section of the 2025 BFI London Film Festival for the best film award and have a screening on October 9, 2025. The film is scheduled to be released theatrically in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and United States on September 18, 2026. In Italy and Germany, it's scheduled to be released theatrically on September 10, 2026. In Spain, it will be released the following day. An official trailer was released on July 9, 2026.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 36 critics' reviews are positive. On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film holds a score of 68/100 based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Pete Hammond for Deadline gave the film a favorable review and wrote that it took him a while to realize that the film was "really a very, very dark comedy." Hammond especially praised Ronan and Waller's acting and the role of Nia Brown as Pauline. Leslie Felperin for The Hollywood Reporter identified the film as "a black comedy that’s more of a charcoal than a true, pitch-dark Vantablack". Guy Lodge for Variety criticized the film's adult side characters as handled "altogether less believably, albeit not without stabs of cynical truth" and the film's title giving "bad apples" metaphor as "overegged".