The Night Nurse
2022 · 12m
Directed by Tim Delaney
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
On her first Christmas Eve in a nursing home, lonely wheelchair-bound Tallulah discovers the mysterious new night nurse is a vampire feeding on the elderly residents, and must decide whether her life is still worth fighting for.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The vampire-nursing-home premise is exactly the kind of high-concept hook that should be insufferable, but Delaney somehow makes you believe in Tallulah's existential calculus instead—it's gothic body horror married to genuine loneliness, which is genuinely perverse in the best way.
A disciplined exercise in tonal control that situates itself squarely in the literary gothic tradition while respecting the constraints of the form; the restraint in how it deploys its supernatural element feels almost classical.
The decision to center the entire moral weight on Tallulah's wheelchair-bound isolation—making her vulnerability both literal and metaphysical—transforms what could've been a gimmick into the film's singular emotional engine.