As baby boomers age up and elder care becomes one of the few industries resistant to technological downsizing, complex and sometimes fraught intergenerational relationships offer up an abundance of possibility for cinematic exploration. A 2026 Sundance Film Festival selection, where it debuted in the NEXT section, Night Nurse showcases the potential intrigue such character studies could hold. A slow-burn psychosexual thriller that trades heavily on vibe conjuring, the feature debut of writer-director Georgia Bernstein is easier to appreciate in the abstract than actually enjoy or find genuinely memorable. Attempting to wring tension out of unhurriedly parceled-out provocation, Night Nurse is a clumsy stab at metaphor that doesn’t quite connect.
After starting her new job at a luxury retirement community with a live-in care facility, Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) is assigned an enigmatic patient by the center’s administrator, Dr. Mann (Mimi Rogers). Douglas Callum (Bruce McKenzie), who smirks and smokes, may or may not be faking memory loss.
Paired with holdover dayshift nurse Mona (Eléonore Hendricks), Eleni one night finds herself pressed by Douglas into a scam phone call targeting a nearby elderly resident, posing as his imperiled granddaughter, in need of money to avoid the consequences of a fictitious accident. Surprisingly, she is turned on by the ruse. Mona is also in on these schemes, so a loose throuple forms. The irresistible pull of these swindles is, for Eleni, sexual in nature. But while they’re definitely erotically charged, the chief appeal for Douglas seems firmly rooted in control.
An outside investigation of the scams, as well as ostensible changes in Douglas’ financial coverage and health, eventually trigger changes. Mona is replaced with Michelle (Colleen Rose Trundy), and an infatuated Eleni finds that the intimacy of her relationship starts to fray; when one of their calls goes too far, Eleni considers drastic action in an attempt to reestablish her connection with Douglas. If one can appreciate the uncanny and uncomfortable target at which Bernstein is aiming, it’s largely because, from a technical perspective, Night Nurse is thoughtfully constructed. The issue is whether these well-made pieces are all more alienating than inviting.
The score, credited to Sam Clapp and Steven Jackson, is a delicate, lilting contribution that aims to give the movie a sense of classic timelessness, but it’s used so heavily and is so lacking in variant motifs that the effect is enervating rather than absorbing. As shot by cinematographer Lidia Nikonova, meanwhile, the film’s aesthetic is a blend of hazy greens and blues mixed with austere and anonymizing set-ups. The nurses all dress in white slacks and blouses, with no name tags, and the movie’s production design, by Breanne Ward, wraps its arms around Bernstein’s preference for uncluttered surfaces and antiseptic frames. When police visit to share the recording of a scam call, Dr. Mann gathers her entire staff in a drab, windowless conference room with nothing on the walls.
These choices all fit, in a sense. But in sum they’re distancing and off-putting; they leave an audience constantly searching for a point of entry. Thematically, that entry point seems to be somewhere between Crash and Secretary, which raises the question of why James Spader isn’t involved. Each of those films assayed sexual fixation through lenses of submissiveness and fetishization, and, on the surface, Night Nurse does too. The film zeroes in early on a gender-framed need to be needed, and when the dialogue isn’t reinforcing this (“It feels good to mean something to somebody”), it’s serving up double entendres or open-ended lines that, as delivered with the cast’s flattened affect, invite a viewer to consider the darkly comedic nature of its premise, hand-in-hand with its eeriness.
In an accommodatingly wide-eyed performance, Paksoy exhibits tremendous comfort with silence. Likewise, McKenzie plays things admirably straight; he injects a playfulness that holds at bay darker feelings about his character. The quality of these performances, much more than the writing, welcome any number of readings, which include but aren’t limited to the allure and costs of psychological manipulation and the fractured decision-making and scrambled impulses of attraction found in abuse survivors. But the characterizations are thin, existing more as contrasting ideas. Eleni is a hollow cipher and the film’s exploration of caregiving tipping over into obsession (in which she and others sit at Douglas’ feet, wrapped around his leg and stroking his knee) is risibly on-the-nose. Driven as it is by mood, the script also struggles with how to advance its plot in a believable manner, resulting in several instances where a leap between scenes just doesn’t connect.
Ambiguity is a laudable aim, and there is no denying that Bernstein’s film possesses it in spades. But there is ambiguity rooted in confident ambivalence and ambiguity born of unsureness, and Night Nurse models much more of the latter. A prime example of this is a night scene roughly halfway through wherein Douglas suddenly and inexplicably holds court with a half-dozen drugged-up nurses, IV carts strewn around a den, with Eleni looking on longingly. The set-up for the scene is striking, but it’s not particularly charged—Douglas merely wants everyone to “have fun.” Without ever locating another power dynamic, or even a particularly compelling tone, the intrigue of this extended sequence dissipates, replaced with frustrated tedium.
A good example of a “calling card” film that affirms its maker’s ability to convey mood if nothing else, Night Nurse is a socio-personal exercise that hasn’t, even for itself, quite sorted out its characters’ backstories and motivations. It’s this vagueness that renders the mild shock of the movie empty and unearned.
Director: Georgia Bernstein
Writer: Georgia Bernstein
Starring: Cemre Paksoy, Bruce McKenzie, Eleonore Hendricks, Colleen Rose Trundy, Mimi Rogers
Release Date: July 10, 2026
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