Unpleasant, slow, and oddly self-important, director Georgia Bernstein’s “Night Nurse” aims to be a daring, boundary-pushing psychosexual thriller that is just too nasty to care much about at all.
The premise is certainly provocative. Douglas (Bruce McKenzie) runs a telephone scam targeting elderly residents of a posh retirement community, and he adds a strange, sexually charged twist by scripting his caregivers to play the part of panicked grandchildren while sneaking in increasingly kinky details. Enter the starry-eyed new night nurse Eleni (Cemre Paksoy), who becomes entangled in the scheme and gradually pushes it to dangerous extremes. On paper, it’s a concept that promises tension, eroticism, and dark humor. In execution, it fails spectacularly.
Bernstein goes for a glacial voyeuristic style, lingering on shots and movements in ways meant to be unsettling and erotic. Unfortunately, the effect is mostly tedious. The film tries very hard to create a perverse, cult-midnight aura a’la “Blue Velvet,” leaning heavily on its psychosexual premise and uncomfortable subject matter. But the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is excruciatingly slow, and the story rarely succeeds neither emotionally nor dramatically. Scenes that are supposed to be seductive or tense just feel awkward, and the sinister tone never quite builds into anything satisfying. All that remains is a lingering sense of nastiness.
It’s also worth noting that the film doesn’t just walk a line between thriller and camp, but it kind of teeters and falls flat on both sides. Its attempts at David Lynch-style weirdness feel derivative rather than inspired, like a half-assed attempt at an homage (read: rip-off). While some cinephiles might find the bizarre sexualized scam premise compelling in a “disturbing midnight movie” sort of way, for most viewers it will be uncomfortable without payoff.
I can appreciate what Bernstein is going for as she aims for a tense, visually distinctive, and provocative piece of cinema, but it simply does not connect. The film is slow, unpleasant, and far more off-putting than enthralling. “Night Nurse” may have ambition, but it’s a nasty little movie that left me happy when it ended.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 