Georgia Bernstein’s first feature, Night Nurse, is heralded as a contemporary erotic thriller. Smart marketing aside, I find the label misleading, because the film doesn’t go far enough to qualify. It feels every bit as repressed as a Reagan-era housewife protesting the sale of Playboy at the local 7-Eleven she didn’t even patronize because “the clientele look dirty.”

That in and of itself is not necessarily a negative — the Night Nurse vibe, I mean, not Mrs. Risner’s racism. Just don’t expect to see anything akin to costar Mimi Rogers’ Full Body Massage. Not even a shoulder rub over the sweater.

Eleni, played by Cemre Paksoy in her film debut, is the titular health care practitioner. Newly hired at a retirement community, she’s assigned to assist Douglas Callum (Bruce McKenzie, Your Name Here), who has “maybe early onset Alzheimer’s,” which is a nice way of saying he’s an irascible, uncouth bastard. Hard-headed and impossible to please, Douglas is a devil in unwashed PJs.

Taking advantage of Eleni’s inexperience, he ropes her into a DUI-bond scam targeting fellow absentminded residents over the landline. Despite Douglas’ erectile dysfunction, first-feature writer/director Georgia Bernstein depicts this scene as a metaphorical sexual assault, which Eleni oddly, suddenly submits to like the contents of a colon to a spoonful of Metamucil. Next thing we know, Douglas has all the nurses under his chainsmoking spell and attending parties in his apartment where they ingest vitamins via IV.

Here’s the problem with the events of the previous paragraph: Why on earth? McKenzie gives such a credibly diabolic performance, we dislike Douglas immediately; we’ve all dealt with manipulative bullies like him. I might be able to comprehend the allure for the mousy Eleni if her backstory filled in enough blanks. But every nurse on staff? Bernstein supplies no impetus for that, which is where the movie lost me.

Rather than a modern twist on the 1980s erotic thriller, Night Nurse strikes me as an update of the ’50s and ’60s juvenile-delinquent flicks decrying the pitfalls of hanging with “the wrong crowd,” with McKenzie as the wild one who’ll rebel against whatever you’ve got, just for kicks. Like those movies, Bernstein’s deals in dialogue charged with innuendo, where seemingly every line holds two distinct meanings. Unlike those movies, perversity and danger hang over every frame, although too undeveloped and antiseptic for my taste. Douglas’ phone cord may coil, but tension is another story. —Rod Lott

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