Photo Credit: NYTimes

This time of year scary movies are everywhere, from Netflix to Hulluween, to the classics. I will watch a scary movie at any time of the year, but there is something particularly exciting about watching one during the Halloween season. Nurses are seen too much in scary movies, but when they are most are the typical “crazy” nurse. These movies definitely do not represent the nursing community but are fun to watch with their extreme portrayals of nurses. 

*Warning Spoilers Ahead*

1. Misery (1990)

Misery is a film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Misery. It is based on a former nurse named Annie Wilkes who is played by the well-known Kathy Bates. Annie is unhealthily obsessed with writer Paul Sheldon who happens to be injured in a car accident near her home. Sheldon believes he is being saved by her until he realizes she is a very big fan of his. 

When brought back Sheldon is badly injured and unable to walk. This leaves him bedridden and dependent on Annie for a car. This becomes a tool of manipulation as she in one scene breaks the bones in his leg with a sledgehammer. And it doesn’t help that Annie and her home are in a desolate location with no neighbors for miles. The depths of her obsession are shown and her eagerness to keep him bedridden forever. 

2. The Babadook (2014)

The Babadook is about a nurse named Amelia played by Essie Davis who experiences the loss of her husband. About to give birth on the way to the hospital, a freakish car accident leaves Amelia’s husband dead. Forcing her to raise her son as a single parent, which causes her to resent her son in time. This resentment she harbors becomes so powerful that it actually takes the form of a monster that haunts her son. 

The audience sees the creature terrifying the child, but doesn’t realize until the end that it is actually an extension of the mother. This is a dynamic not often seen in movies, where the mother is the evil force/being that is driving the terror. As the movie culminates with the mother finally facing her anger over being widowed, the “monster” is now kept in the basement and everything seems ok. A very strange ending movie for sure. 

3. Fragile (2005)

Fragile is about a nurse named Amy played by Calista Flockhart working in a rundown and haunted children’s hospital. As she starts her work, she soon realizes that there is an evil spirit disturbing the hospital and the children in it. Amy learns the reason behind the scary incidents that keep occurring, a former patient named Charlotte who died in the hospital.

Amy fights to protect the children from this malevolent ghost and discover the reason behind her horrors in the hospital. The scary part is that the hospital itself is considered unfit for use and hasn’t been operating successfully in many years. 

4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest features the infamous Nurse Ratched played by Louise Fletcher. A nurse that is talked about from middle school and on. Ranked as one of the top film villains of all time, Nurse Ratched, is in charge of the mental health clinic and its patients. In the clinic, the patients suffer from a variety of mental health illnesses, and she uses her authority to mentally break them down.

She uses her stern voice to manipulate and unnerve the patients. Patients that are already very unstable themselves and easy to upset. The moment in which she really displays this is when she encourages patient Billy Bibbit to commit suicide. She mentally breaks down Bibbit with her knowledge of his intense fear for his mother. 

5. Silent Hill (2006)

Silent Hill is already a terrifying movie with or without the nurses. This is definitely not a movie for children out of all the ones on this list. For any Silent Hill fans, nurses play an important role in the series. They are not typical nurses and are referred to as “Puppet Nurses”. These nurses are the height of the average female and wear the old-fashioned white nursing gowns. Although they have no faces and a very distorted figure. With a strange almost insect-like back protruding from their bodies. 

These creatures are often seen wandering around the streets of Silent Hill and in the Brookhaven Hospital. In one scene they are roaming around the basement of a town hall. So, they appear in random places that make no sense. The entire movie really makes no sense, but it is very compelling and terrifying. 

All of these movies are quite terrifying and perfect to watch on Halloween night. They show very dramatic and extreme displays of nurse education being used for evil intent. My personal favorite is Misery, it is a psychological horror movie, and not quite as gory as Silent Hill.