Review: ‘Night Nurse’ is a thrillingly bizarre erotic comedy and future cult classic
2026 / Dir. Georgia Bernstein / 2026 Sundance Film Festival
Rating: 4/5
Watch if you like: A psychosexual mix of Secretary and Crash set inside a retirement community, or you get strangely aroused by telemarketer calls.
A remarkably self-assured debut feature from Georgia Bernstein and wild-eyed debut performance from lead actress Cemre Paksoy, Night Nurse is a thrillingly bizarre erotic comedy that succeeds through its steadfast commitment to its boundary-pushing vision. When Eleni (Paksoy) starts a new job as a live-in night nurse at a retirement village, she’s immediately taken in by her charge, Douglas (an excellent Bruce McKenzie), a rapscallion with supposed memory problems, but in reality is pulling a series of phone scams on elderly men by coercing nurses to pretend to be troubled grandaughters that need money to avoid going to prison. Dripping with absurd levels of uncomfortable eroticism, Douglas meets his match, or finds his equal, in Eleni who finds herself drawn to the psychosexual foreplay of scamming old men.
Eleni is a bit too much of a cipher at times and the film loses steam whenever she’s sidelined in favor of Douglas’s wandering eye, but that doesn’t matter in the long run when the world building and aesthetic of Night Nurse is so confidently delivered. Considering this is both a low-budget indie and debut, the level of craft is truly astounding. A cult classic in the making.