Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever (2023)

Nightwatch: Demons Are ForeverIt’s been approximately 30 years since the events of Nightwatch aka Nattevakten (1994), and the survivors aren’t actually faring so well. Martin is a complete wreck, not just because of his obvious PTSD but also because his wife Kalinka committed suicide after never getting over the trauma this incident caused her. He’s without a job and haven’t even received any welfare pay, and he tries to chase away his demons with drink and pills. Yeah, that always works great. His daughter, Emma, is trying to help him out but it’s apparent that she hasn’t properly processed her mother’s suicide either, which isn’t too surprising considering that she’s the one who found her. Not to mention the impact it all had on Jens, who bailed ass out of the country and have been living in Thailand ever since. Trauma has indeed dug its claws deep into everyone involved. Emma was never told about what happened, but when looking through some old newspaper clippings she finds out about the serial killer Wörmer and her parents involvement with him. History often likes to repeat itself, and Emma ends up taking a night watch job at – you guessed it – the exact same place as her father worked. Good choice! And when she finds out that Wörmer is still alive and just woke up from his coma, she wants to meet him in the hopes of finally exorcising both her father’s demons and her own. Unwittingly, she just ends up letting even more demons loose…

 

Nightwatch – Demons are Forever (original title: Nattevagten – Dæmoner går i arv) is a danish thriller/horror movie from 2023. It’s a direct sequel to the first film from 1994, Nightwatch, and both are written and directed by Ole Bornedal. A sequel almost 30 years later may feel like an odd choice, but considering how this movie became a danish cult classic back in the days it’s a fun way to re-introduce the film while giving a follow-up to the story, including the original actors coming back to play their earlier roles. It’s definitely a nice watch for those who have seen the original, and while some may argue that a sequel this long afterwards feels unnecessary, I’d like to counter-argue with what the hell kind of sequel these days are really necessary anyways..?

 

Just like the first film, there is a mystery and several red herrings attempting to throw you off guard. While this isn’t as effective as in the first, it’s compelling enough to keep you engaged. The red thread here is trauma and its effect on everyone involved, and while this sequel can’t even come close to being as effectual for today’s audience as the first film was (which would have been a bit weird to expect anyways) it’s still a well-crafted thriller. It’s also a lot of fun to see the old actors from the first film getting back together again for this sequel, and the actor playing Emma, Fanny Bornedal, is the director’s own daughter. It was also enjoyable to see Ulf Pilgaard back as the serial killer Wörmer, although quite reduced due to old age (83 years) he manages to come off as an intimidating predator who of course still likes to repeatedly listen to some creepy-ass old song (Lille Lise lett på tå).

 

Overall, Nightwatch – Demons are Forever is a decent sequel that comes incredibly late, but better late than never as they say. Or at least that’s true in some cases. Sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, and if we are going to be perfectly honest there wasn’t really any of that in the original either, it was just presented to an audience where the majority had never seen something like that before. The film offers up a nice thriller mystery and will probably work best for those who have seen the original, although it isn’t a must.

 

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Writer and director: Ole Bornedal
Country & year: Denmark, 2023
Original title: Nattevagten – Dæmoner går i arv
Actors: Fanny Leander Bornedal, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Alex Høgh Andersen, Sara Viktoria Bjerregaard, Kim Bodnia, Vibeke Hastrup, Pelle Emil Hebsgaard, Ulf Pilgaard, Sonja Richter, Paprika Steen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6318608/

 

Prequel: Nightwatch (1994)

 

Vanja Ghoul

 

 

 

Nightwatch (1994)

NightwatchMartin is a young law student who’s looking for a typical student job: something that will earn him a bit of money but won’t get in the way of his studies. He ends up seeking a job as a night watchman at the Forensic Medicine Institute, which seems to be perfect. Just sitting there all alone at night, being able to spend some of that time studying. It doesn’t take many nights before paranoia starts setting in, and several unexplained things start happening at the place. Is the job just getting under his skin and fraying his nerves, or is something else at play here? Things get worse as one of the victims of an uncaught serial killer is brought in to the morgue, and just as Martin seriously starts wondering if he’s losing his mind, something happens that ends up making him the prime suspect of the murders.

 

Nightwatch (Danish title Nattevagten) is a Danish horror thriller from 1994, written and directed by Ole Bornedal. After Bornedal released his television film Masturbator (1993), he got the inspiration for Nightwatch after visiting the morgue, which he found to be “both scary and beautiful”. It made him think about how, on the outside of a morgue the daily life continues on, while on the inside you’re standing there with the realization that this is where everything ends. Upon release, the film was a huge success in Denmark where it sold 465.529 tickets. In fact, it got so popular that it ended up being a bigger box office hit in the country than Jurassic Park the previous year.

 

The movie starts out fine enough, with a quick introduction to Martin and the other main characters. When he gets the job and the old, soon to be retired, night guard shows him around, there’s a checklist of “rules” the guard advices him to follow: get yourself a radio. When going into the room with the stiffs, just look straight ahead and never to the sides. And so on. If this wasn’t a movie from 1994, you could’ve thought this setup was based on some kind of classic Creepypasta story. However, like with many things that happen in this movie, you’re thrown a load of red herrings already from the start in order to make you just as confused as the main character ends up being.

 

Originally, the movie was seen as a rather gruesome little flick, and while there are some topics that certainly are controversial (necrophilia, under-aged prostitutes, etc.) none of these topics are displayed in a manner that’s exposed enough to be adequately disturbing. Sure, it was probably an entirely different experience back in ’94 when Scandinavian movies didn’t have much to offer in the horror genre to begin with, but seen with modern eyes it’s not really going to crawl under your skin. There are several effective scenes here though, especially when Martin takes his rounds in the morgue when he’s not sure exactly what is going on, and the scene of a grisly murder that happens during the soundtrack of a cheesy, upbeat Danish song (Lille Lise let på tå) that provided a perfect paradoxical effect. Overall it’s a fun and exciting thriller with lots of twists and turns, and although there are some slight pacing issues throughout, it keeps you entertained and guessing what will happen next.

 

While the movie was a huge success in its home country, there were some who didn’t exactly find themselves pleased with the whole situation. Apparently, the film caused a rise in number of people who had withdrawn their organ donation wills, and Professor Morten Møller claimed it was due to the film’s distorted image of doctors, students and researchers’ treatment of the dead and their body parts. He stated: “The movieNightwatch’ has certainly not had a positive effect on us. I don’t know what people imagine. That we should be sexually interested in the dead and want to lie down on their bed? A crazy fantasy that has not the slightest hold in reality.” Oh well…in any case, there’s no doubt that Nightwatch certainly had quite an impact in its home country.

 

There was also an english-language remake of the film released in 1997, also directed by Bornedal, and this year, a whole 30 years later, we get a sequel which is called Nightwatch – Demons are Forever. It was originally released in Denmark in December 2023, but it’s starting to hit the theaters elsewhere in May this year.

 

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Writer and director: Ole Bornedal
Country & year: Denmark, 1994
Original title: Nattevagten
Actors: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sofie Gråbøl, Kim Bodnia, Lotte Andersen, Ulf Pilgaard, Rikke Louise Andersson, Stig Hoffmeyer, Gyrd Løfquist, Niels Anders Thorn
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110631/

 

Sequel: Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever (2023)

 

Vanja Ghoul