Movie Review: Nurse (2013)

 

Wait, this movie was in 3D? Especially after finally seeing it, I simply must ask the question - "What in the hell for?" I have never heard of such an unnecessary use of 3D before. Truth be told, the movie wasn't all that good for 2D, either. The poster makes it look like it's going to be a lot more sexy, bloody, and interesting than it ends up being, and that is very, very disappointing.

Abby Russell is a dedicated nurse at All Saints Hospital, but she has a weakness for seducing and then murdering men she feels are the worst - cheaters. She is thrown from this personal mission when she becomes involved with Danni Rodgers, a new young nurse at her hospital that she takes under her wing.

Nurse had the perfect setup to be a wonderfully fun camp film with a healthy dose of blood and sex, but it doesn't take advantage of anything that it has going for it. A big problem that contributed to this is that the movie lacks any real focus - it doesn't fully commit to what kind of movie it wants to be, and it doesn't fully focus on a single character. Abby's voiceover throughout suggests that as our narrator, the movie should be told through her eyes. And yet, half of the film seems focused on Abby and the other half seems focused on Danni, the protagonist. The tone is also hard to place. It's a black comedy, but it's not funny at all. It's bloody, but it's not exactly horror all the time. I don't know what it is.

Paz de la Huerta was miscast. Sure, she has a killer hot bod that looks good in that ridiculous nurse's uniform, but everything else about her was so wrong. Abby Russell should have been much more magnetic and charismatic. De la Huerta's diction made it seem like she was going for sultry and pouty, when it really sounded like someone whose first language was not English because of how long it took her to say each line of dialogue (P.S. this is not the case - Paz is American!). Though she gives Abby a lot of confidence in everything that she does, she doesn't make her all that charming, or like she is capable of seducing any man she comes in contact with, which is what the movie suggests. I read somewhere that Dita von Teese was supposed to be in the movie - I think she would have made a much better Abby.

Katrina Bowden, the adorable cutie from Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, tries to step up her game in Nurse as Danni Rodgers. There isn't really much to her character though, and she basically ends up being the typical "figure out who this crazy bitch really is" characters so we can get to the bloody showdown at the end. Boris Kodjoe plays a guy who is way too hot to be a policeman, and is also one of the worst policemen ever because he can't figure out for himself that Abby is a nutcase.

Speaking of the bloody showdown - it really is the best part of the movie, but it's not enough. If Abby was this crazy murderer without a conscience, then we should've gotten some better kills earlier in the movie than just her pushing some guy off a roof. They save all the really good, bloody stuff for the end and it's over far too quickly for it to be satisfying. The flow of the action at the end is also really off and everything happens too easily for Abby. How the hell did she get out of the hospital after all that carnage anyway, SERIOUSLY? Danni is pretty much forgotten about at the end, and another character who they try to make all symbolic (the only man Abby likes) is talked into committing a felony also way too easily just so they can get to the winky-wink ending they had picked out.

I don't know about you all, but I was left with a huge "That's it?" reaction for Nurse. If they had really embraced the inherent campiness that the movie had going for it visually, it could have been much more fun and effective.