IndieWire has exclusively unveiled the first trailer for Georgia Bernstein's Night Nurse, promising a psychological nightmare that's both strangely compelling and deeply unsettling. This elegantly disorienting trailer, from Independent Film Company, offers a glimpse of the writer-director's Sundance-acclaimed debut, which hits theaters on July 10th.
«Night Nurse is a slippery thriller that transforms an elite nursing home into the setting for something increasingly sinister. Anchored by a captivating performance from Cemre Paksoy, the film combines paranoia over scam calls, erotic obsession, and existential dread to create a film that's hard to shake even after watching the two-minute trailer.
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The story centers on Eleni (Paksoy), a young nurse who arrives at an elite nursing home and soon becomes embroiled in a series of mysterious scam calls targeting residents. As her connection with one particularly alluring patient, Douglas (Bruce Mackenzie), deepens, the line between desire and delusion begins to blur.
While the trailer for "Nanny Night" is deliberately vague about what happens to Eleni, it at least makes clear the feelings Bernstein wants to evoke in viewers. The footage is chaotic, dreamlike, and deeply unsettling, as the young nurse grows ever closer to her elusive charge.
Cuddling and scenic car rides somehow evoke the unsettling feeling of an erotic thriller, and this early video for "Night Nurse" gradually hints at how Bernstein plans to transform this beautiful corner of the world into something far stranger. Recalling the psychological disorientation of "Eyes Wide Shut" and creating an atmosphere of dread reminiscent of the studio's earlier film "The Rule of Jenny Pen," Bernstein seems to be aiming for more than standard genre shocks.
«"The most exciting thing about the current stage of cinema's development is the clear demand from audiences for original stories told with genuine artistic conviction, stories that touch on something psychologically truthful," Bernstein said in a statement provided to IndieWire. "Night Nurse draws from precisely this source. It's a deeply personal film, exploring the untamed emotions that exist within the maelstrom of intimate, even unexpected, relationships. I made exactly the film I envisioned, and I'm very proud of it.".
Bernstein's debut feature film premiered in the NEXT section at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It stars Paksoy, along with Bruce Mackenzie, Eleanor Hendricks, Colleen Rose Trundy, and Mimi Rogers. According to the official synopsis (which doesn't offer many details, but after all, any clue is better than none!), Night Nurse explores nursing as both a "calling" and an "obsession," exploring the sometimes dangerously thin line between devotion and self-destruction.
Watch the trailer for Night Nurse below.