Night Nurse

The directorial debut of Georgia Bernstein, presented in the NEXT section of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Night Nurse immediately drew critical attention for its unusual mix of psychosexual thriller and horror set inside a retirement community, a setting rarely associated with the erotic genre. Starring Cemre Paksoy alongside veteran Mimi Rogers, the film follows a young nurse who grows attached to a mysterious patient while the community she works in is rattled by a string of harassing phone calls. org called it a film for genre connoisseurs, one that turns unease into aesthetic material, while The Film Stage described it as a perverse, seductive thriller.

Opinions were far from unanimous, however, with The AV Club judging its erotic tension underdeveloped, while still acknowledging its thematic boldness in tackling desire and vulnerability in older age, territory almost never explored by mainstream cinema. Picked up by Independent Film Company, the historic label revived from the ashes of IFC Films, the movie opened in American theaters on July 10, 2026 before debuting digitally on August 11. Mixed reviews aside, Night Nurse remains an intriguing experiment within the genre, proving that attraction and seduction can be told outside the usual settings, bringing sexual tension into spaces normally considered sterile.