Une infirmière trop parfaite

Somewhere in Los Angeles, professional chef Sarah Butler (as Brooke Harmon) gets a promotion. A happy cook, Ms. Butler has just moved in with handsome boyfriend Steven Good (as Lance Boston). An Internet web designer, Mr. Good proposed marriage to Butler. She decided the couple should live together for around three years, before making it legal. That seems reasonable, for our characters. After celebrating her work promotion, they have a tragic accident while driving home. For reasons unclear, a strange man walks into ongoing traffic and is hit by Good. Butler is fine, but Good has a broken leg. He needs a full-time nurse to help him take his medication and go to the bathroom. In walks attractive Lindsay Hartley (as Chloe Spade)...

"Nightmare Nurse" is your average "Lifetime" TV movie. The obvious weakness is a story with plot points that should have been clearer. Jake Helgren's story is implausible, as is necessary for the genre, but you'll see things happening that require further explanation. Most obviously, characters appear in places too unexpectedly...

Relatively new to this sort of movie, director Craig Moss is outstanding. His early hospital scenes capture the mood and characters very well. The shot of Good with his leg raised way up was great. Having the hapless couple wake up in Verdugo Hills Hospital with nurses "Barb" and "Paul" set the stage for a "Nightmare Nurse" adventure. Coming to consciousness with "Barb" and "Paul" in that hospital would make me squeamish. VHH nurses don't look like Traci Lords and Michael Finn. Still, considering the story, they are well cast. The folks who make TV movies should send the director a multi-picture contract, as Mr. Moss keeps the characters engaging with limited sets and budget. Moss should also consider holding out for bigger pictures.

***** Nightmare Nurse (3/5/2016) Craig Moss ~ Sarah Butler, Steven Good, Lindsay Hartley, Traci Lords

Lifetime movies is usually a simple drama or thriller done for casual night, although there have been some remarkable mentions. "Nightmare Nurse" is not incredibly provoking or terrifying by any means. It plays in safe formula of constrained patient and the reliance on stranger. A couple creepy scenes aside, there's nothing terribly shocking on both acting and presentation.

Lance (Steven Good) is hurt in a bizarre car accident and in need of a nurse. Along comes Chloe (Lindsay Hartley) the odd seemingly too nice of a nurse who has equal dark side. The actors are presentable, all looking like models or beautified young adults. However, there's not much in term of setting the tone for dread, mainly because its runtime is relatively short.

It's a drama at heart, with a little bit of suspense and strange attraction in between. This won't be effective for those craving a solid scare or even jump scare since it's fairly timid. It will do for a popcorn night with basic drama, but one should maintain a manageable expectation since "Nightmare Nurse" won't treat any patient with visceral conviction.

Is this an Oscar-worthy film? Not by a long shot. Is it the worst film to ever be made? Not by a long shot. It's just, mediocre. It's not bad, and it's not good. The acting is amateur, the cinematography and editing are not up to Hollywood standards, but there's a story and a plot twist that do make this movie entertaining. It's a bit predictable, but not entirely so. I gave it 6/10 because, while there certainly is room for improvement, this movie is certainly not the stinker it's being made out to be by many of the other reviews here. I watched it on Amazon Prime which, if you like bad movies, is quite the treasure trove for them.

The first Lifetime movie I watched last night was their Saturday night "world premiere" of Nightmare Nurse, yet another entry in their series of "The Nightmare _____" (as opposed to "The Perfect _____," "_____ at 17" and "The _____ S/he Met Online"), directed by Craig Moss from a script by Jake Helgren and produced by a company called Cartel Pictures in association with our old friends from previous Lifetime movies, Marvista Entertainment. It opens with a scene in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant (we hear a lot about how great the food is and get to see the divo-ish behavior of the main chef, but we never see the actual dining room, presumably because that would have been one more set the folks at Cartel and Marvista would have had to budget for) in which the big-cheese chef is complimenting Brooke Herron (Sarah Butler) on her latest creation and announcing her promotion to sous-chef, which is supposed to be a big deal in both money and status. Then we see her celebrating with her live-in boyfriend Lance Dawson (Steven Good, who's actually a nice piece of eye candy — a truly hot-looking male is rare in a Lifetime movie unless he's cast as a villain!) — though I'm guessing at the last name and it could be "Bawson" or "Lawson" — they're both downing way too many shots than are good for them and when they get in their car to drive home, they literally run into a man in the middle of the road and, though Lance (at the wheel) tries to avoid him, he hits him anyway and then runs his own car into a tree. Brooke gets away with a few cracked ribs but Lance's right leg is broken and needs a full cast, while the pedestrian they hit is killed. The police interrogate both Brooke and Lance while in the hospital but decide it was an unfortunate accident. Brooke is able to go back to work for a few days but Lance needs extensive in-home care, the way my long-term disabled home-care client did, is a mystery) — and the agency the hospital works with sends Chloe Spade (Lindsay Hartley). Of course, Chloe's sweetness-and-light act when she first shows up for work and agrees to start one day early whether she gets paid for it or not is an act, and Brooke starts to suspect when she sees that the pasta dish she gave portions of to Chloe (in the styrofoam trays in which restaurants frequently pack to-go orders — did she just happen to have them lying around her house?) was immediately thrown away when Brooke left on her first night. My immediate assumption was that Chloe would turn out to be the girlfriend of the man Lance and Brooke had run over and killed in their car in the early scene, and she was there to make our lovebirds' lives miserable — but then writer Helgren threw us several curveballs.

"Nightmare Nurse" is a pretty mediocre movie, not as bad as some Lifetime productions have been but not as good, either. The situations are pretty preposterous but the full-throated acting saves the day. Steven Good isn't really challenged by playing a milquetoast victim (but then he's nice-looking enough it doesn't really matter whether or not he can act!), and Sarah Butler is competent but no more (but then a more charismatic performer might have made the bond between Brooke and Lance too strong and left us not believing anyone could seduce Lance away from her), but René Ashton is quite good in the limited screen time for the character, Lindsay Hartley is an excellent Lifetime psycho as Chloe, and Traci Lords is also great in a small but showy role. Though the subject of "Nightmare Nurse" is psychopathic obsession, still there's a welcome lightness to the treatment, an ample supply of comic relief (notably the scene in which Chloe attempts to walk Lance to the bathroom so he can stand at the toilet and use it, and he's too embarrassed to be able to do so in her presence while he's so helpless he has to rely on her to aim!) that keeps the film from the sinister lugubriousness of last week's Lifetime "world premiere," "Suicide Note."

NIGHTMARE NURSE (TV Movie 2016)

BASIC PLOT: Brooke (Sarah Butler) and Lance (Steven Good) are a young couple happily sharing their lives together.

Hard work has earned Brooke a well deserved promotion to Sous Chef. After celebrating Brooke's newfound success, with cake and cocktails, the couple take their celebration homeward. To their horror, on the drive home, a drunkard steps out in front of their car. He is killed, and Lance is hurt. The couple is not to blame, but due to his injuries, Lance needs home health care. Chloe (Lindsay Hartley) seems like the perfect fit. She's attentive, well versed, and goes above and beyond her required duties as a nurse. But something strange is happening with Chloe. At first, it's nothing serious, just a little white lie or two. But as time goes on, Chloe's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre. She's fixated on Lance, and her obsessive actions are harder to ignore.

Is Chloe having a breakdown? Or is someone more dangerous, pulling her strings? Can Brooke and Lance survive long enough to find out?

WHAT WORKS: *The acting is above average for made-for-tv standards. All the actors deliver believable performances, and this elevates it above the standard faire.

*For a made-for-tv melodrama, there's a lot of character development. None of the characters are too over the top, so it's more believable, and more enjoyable. You find yourself rooting for these characters, and that doesn't often happen in made-for-tv offerings.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: *Chloe calls, and tries to get an appointment with her psychiatrist. She's perspicuously agitated, and tells the receptionist her medication is not working. They put her off for a week, even though she's clearly in crisis. This would not happen! They would get her in immediately.

TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION: *This is a melodrama. If you watch this movie with that in mind, you'll like it a whole lot more. You're not supposed to take the over-the-top motives too seriously, it's pure entertainment. STOP LOOKING FOR EMMYS FROM LIFETIME MOVIES!

CLOSING NOTES: *This is a Made-For-TV movie, please keep that in mind before you watch\rate it. TV movies have a much lower budget, and so your expectations should be adjusted.

*I have no connection to the film, or production in ANY way. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews. Hope I helped you out.