NURSIE (2005) *

C. Thomas Howell stars as a doctor who gets ran off the road on a dark and stormy night and wakes up in a strange nursing home.  A wacko nurse (Savannah Boucher) tries to take care of him and once he is well, she wants him to take care of old folks who live there too.  When he resists, the nurse drugs him, and holds him hostage in the home.  Howell soon learns the others are also being held against their will and together they stage a revolt.

Nursie is a muddled, boring, and forgettable mishmash of a Misery knockoff, a crazy redneck movie, and a ‘90s From Hell thriller.  Shot using digital cameras, it looks cheap and the single location only enhances that feeling.  It also doesn’t help that an old woman in a nurse uniform isn’t intimidating or scary in the least.  

Nursie also features a record number of scenes of a groggy C. Thomas Howell slowly trying to get out of bed.  I’m sorry, but it’s hard to feel sorry for his character when it takes him half the movie to make a legitimate escape attempt, especially when it’s painfully obvious that everyone around him is a total nut job.  He doesn’t give a bad performance exactly.  It’s just that he’s unable to do anything with the shitty script.

After a while (scratch that, almost immediately), you feel like you’re the one held prisoner by the old kook.  Nursie is agonizingly slow, and even when something does happen, there’s always some contrived plot device to send Howell back into bed.  The climax is woefully shitty too.  In fact, the whole thing would’ve been over ninety minutes sooner if he just knocked the old bat’s lights out once she started acting cuckoo.  

In short, this Nursie belongs in a bedpan.