Night Nurse was released earlier this summer.
Night Nurse is a psychosexual thriller that finds many ways to disturb you
Yesyou don’t see many films like Night nurse more. It’s basically the spiritual successor to all those erotic thrillers that were showing on Cinemax around three in the morning back in the day. It is kind of a horror film, but not really. It is kind softcore, but not really. And naturally, it is kind to entertain, but not really.
The first big surprise Night nurse is the director. You could assume a movie about scheming, conniving lesbian nurses and baby boomer con artists who may or may not be faking dementia would be the domain of male-gaze schlock mongers a’la Jim Wynorskibut no, the filmmaker behind this one is Georgia Bernstein – a director who also wrote the screenplay. This might lead you to believe that there is a few kind of female empowerment message in the film, but Night nurse is a neo-lower rung of the new Blockbuster thriller section that’s gloriously devoid of anything you might envision policy. It’s a film so rooted in the 90s that I don’t even think reminder See only one smart phone at any time in the image. Come to think of it, this movie might have more landlines than any film this century. And surprisingly, it is not even a period piece. I think?
Thrillers like this are all about twists and turns, double and triple crosses, so saying a lot about the plot kind of ruins everything for you. But the gist, without spoilers, is this: Cemre Paksoy plays our central character, the titular Night nurse. As soon as she appears on screen – with a bug-eyed expression on her face that immediately reminded me of Angela at the end of the very first Sleep camp movie – you know, SOMETHING is 100% wrong with her. Of course, at the beginning of the film you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’ll find out in due time.
The other central character in the film is played by Bruce McKenzie. He’s an old guy in a retirement home who apparently has some money, except he might be suffering from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, or he might be pretend have early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, and it could be implicit in a series of phone scams targeting other geriatric residents, or he could be the one being manipulated by Paksov and his girlfriend and fellow nurse (played by Eleanore Hendricks.) The film never makes it obvious. what is this This is really happening, and as far as we know, each this damn character in the movie is a lying manipulator who scams everyone in the movie. Of course, this may sound cynical and a little nihilistic… and yes, I suppose East.
Night nurseat the very least, certainly succeeds in making you uncomfortable. As soon as we are introduced to the retirement villa – where the nurses engage in some unexpectedly intimate aquagym exercises with their patients – we have the impression that something very something abnormal is happening. It is later revealed that the patients at the retirement home are all relatively wealthy, and they perhaps they are the ones who take advantage of the nurses in a series of increasingly bizarre trysts that straddle the line between sexually aberrant and simply absurd. If you like BDSM and inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke, you will probably love this movie.
It’s a film that’s very reminiscent of something like Wild Things Or Sex, lies and video. I guess you could say the movie revolves around a love triangle, except there’s not a lot of love and I don’t think real the geometric shape that applies is a triangle. You don’t know who is a user and who is used, or if they are just pretend be a user, or simply pretend to use, or who knows, maybe they really are are in cuddle parties with chain-smoking elderly people. There’s a scene where two characters start open-mouthed kissing (among other things) in a kitchenette area and it’s like watching two squirrels fight over an acorn. This movie is a lot of things, but “sexy” isn’t one of them.
Maybe the director was trying to make the world’s first film anti-erotic thriller – a film that eliminates all the sexual from psychosexual dramas. By now we all know that a film like this has to end with someone being choked, and without revealing too many key details, let’s just say the grand finale feels like a quadruple twist ending. I mean, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I guess that’s the point. As long as you’re out of the way, that’s the important part.
I didn’t like Night nursebut I didn’t hate it either. It is a film which recalls a very specific type of film that has all but disappeared as a mainstream attraction. You won’t see too many hard-R thrillers about phone scams targeting the elderly And weird sex with Medicare, and in both respects you can’t say Night nurse disappoints. It’s a film that finds a way to make you feel very uncomfortable in a quite rare way. We’ve already seen a billion decapitations and dismemberments at this compound, but when was the last time you saw a 70-year-old man and a 20-something nurse trading spit as if they were sharing the same piece of beef jerky? Exactly, y’all.
I can’t celebrate Night nurse too much, but I can at least celebrate having done something somehow different and old fashioned. It’s the epitome of an audience-alienating premise, to the point where I imagine most viewers tune in. simply because of the morbid curiosity of it all. It may not be a great movie, but it’s pretty awesome to be worrying one way or another, very few films are these days. You might not like him, but you can still respect him for pushing the boundaries of good taste…and pretty damn far, at that.
GIVE A WATCH IF YOU LIKE: The Shannon Tweed films, that old Bruce Willis vehicle Color of the nightgerontophilia
DIRECTOR: Georgia Bernstein
WRITER: Georgia Bernstein
WITH: Cemre Paksoy, Bruce McKenzie, Eleonore Hendricks, Mimi Rodgers
STUDIOS: Missing Link Productions, Gary Prairie Productions
DISTRIBUTER: Independent film company
LANGUAGE: English
RUNNING DURATION: 95 minutes
RELEASE DATE: July 10, 2026
