Years back, I saw a 1997 thriller called Nightwatch that starred Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin, and Nick Nolte. I remembered it being pretty decent, and I also vaguely remembered that it was an English-language remake of a foreign film, so I always resolved to check out the original at some point in time. But of course, over the years, I simply forgot about it.
Well, lo and behold, in May of 2024, Shudder added the 1994 original Danish Nightwatch (aka Nattevagten) to their lineup, probably because a sequel called Nightwatch – Demons Are Forever was released back in late 2023 featuring most of the same cast. I did a low-key squeal of excitement when I saw this, and settled in with a hot cup of joe to check it out on one stormy weekend afternoon.
Both the 1994 original and the 1997 remake were directed by Ole Bornedal, and though I don’t remember much about the 1997 version other than the impression of it being pretty good, this one was pretty fantastic, with a creepy atmosphere throughout and some outstanding acting performances, including a lead character played by none other than Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (better known as Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones). The plot of this one is the same as the 1997 film, so if you’ve seen the remake there won’t be any surprises here, but honestly, I saw the remake so long ago that I didn’t recall the outcome at all, so it all seemed new to me.
The plot centers on a young law student named Martin Bork, who gets a new job as a night watchman at a mortuary to earn some extra money. Sure, it’s gruesome, but he reckons it’s an easy gig: he can just sit on his ass all night and study, no one will bother him, and he’ll get paid to boot.
The previous night watchman (Gyrd Løfquist), a spooky old codger with milky eyes and a somewhat secretive manner, shows Martin around the place, pointing out, in particular, the room with all the vats filled with body parts, and the long, brightly lit area with all the new stiffs under sheets. Martin asks why cords are hanging over all the gurneys with the bodies on them, and the old man says it’s in case one of the dead people wakes up. If a cord is pulled, it will set off an alarm in the night watchman’s office. Don’t worry, though, says the old man; it has literally never happened.
The old man also tells Martin that one of the previous night watchmen got fired for having sex with the corpses, but it was all hushed up. So there’s that.
Other than the mortuary angle, there’s a bunch of other stuff going on, both in Martin’s life and around Copenhagen in general. For one, Martin has a girlfriend named Kalinka (Sofie Gråbøl) who he loves very much and is thinking about marrying. He also has an obnoxious best friend named Jens (Kim Bodnia), whose girlfriend Lotte (Lotte Andersen) is Kalinka’s best friend. More on Jens later, because he’s a big part of the plot.
In addition, there appears to be a serial killer on the loose in the city, murdering sex workers. One of the victims is brought into the morgue Martin works at, which is when he meets Peter Wörmer (Ulf Pilgaard), the detective in charge of the investigation. Wörmer actually lets Martin see the woman’s body after she’s brought in, which is all kinds of messed up, and tells Martin in confidence that the killer has a signature: he scalps all his victims, a fact they’ve been keeping from the media.
Martin is settling into his new job, though of course it’s pretty eerie at first, and he has a couple of false alarms, which put him on the shit list of a supercilious doctor at the facility (Niels Anders Thorn) who is endlessly trying to get Martin fired. One of these false alarms occurs when the “dead body waking up” siren goes off one night. A panicked Martin calls the duty nurse like he’s supposed to, but she can’t be bothered since she’s sure it’s a false alarm, so Martin has to go down there himself to see what the problem is. He nearly shits his pants when one of the bodies indeed starts to move under its sheet, but then it’s revealed it’s just his jerk-ass friend Jens playing a prank on him.
Yeah, about Jens. The dude seems to be having some kind of existential crisis, and fears becoming boring and conventional like his parents. Because of this, he’s been trying to do increasingly crazy shit in order to experience the full range of human emotions and depravity, or grab life by the balls, or something. He tells Martin after a drunken pub session one night that he’s been running around on Lotte and seeing a sex worker named Joyce (Rikke Louise Andersson), who will do absolutely anything he asks her to.
Martin is sort of shocked by this, but it doesn’t take too much convincing from Jens for Martin to agree to a game. Basically, if one bro challenges the other bro to do something, no matter how fucked up it is, they have to do it, no questions asked. If said bro doesn’t do what the other bro requested, they lose the challenge and have to marry their girlfriend, because apparently this is the worst punishment Jens can think of. This kind of thing can obviously go all kinds of sideways, but an inebriated Martin is there for it. Jens, therefore, sets him up on a date with Joyce.
On this date, at which Jens pays Joyce various sums to get her to do and say uncomfortable things, including starting to blow Martin in the middle of a fancy restaurant, she reveals that the last victim of the serial killer was her best friend, a fact that puts a bit of a damper on the evening. She also says that her weirdest client likes her to pretend she’s dead while he’s having sex with her. Hmmmm.
Not long after this, Martin has a terrible scare at the morgue when it appears that the body of the serial killer’s last victim got up and walked down the hall, as evidenced by bloody footprints and her body being slumped against a wall in another room. The authorities are called, but by the time they get there, the body is right back where it’s supposed to be and there’s no blood anywhere, exactly as if it never happened. Martin low-key starts to believe this job is getting to him, and he might be losing his mind. By the same token, the cops start to believe that Martin might actually be the killer.
As the movie goes on, though, it’s clear that something far more nefarious might be going on, and while the story’s twist might not be too difficult to figure out if you were paying attention, the ride is still a lot of tense, nail-biting fun.
As thrillers go, this one is really solid; it has a great, dread-infused atmosphere, an affable lead character who you’re rooting for even when he does boneheaded things, and a mystery with lots of red herrings and unexpected turns. The character of Jens is pretty unlikeable, but still compelling to watch, and in the context of the story, there’s a reason why he’s the way he is.
If I had any criticism, it would be that the ending was a bit too funny and upbeat, considering the tone of the rest of the film, but I heard that the recent sequel (which I haven’t seen) undoes a lot of the original’s somewhat “happy” ending. That said, I wasn’t really all that bothered, as it’s not that different from the way lots of other thrillers end.
If you saw the 1997 remake and are curious to see where it all came from, I would absolutely recommend the 1994 Nightwatch; it’s obviously a Danish film so the cultural context is going to be different than the American version, but in my opinion it’s definitely worth watching and has some outstandingly unsettling sequences and a good amount of gore if you’re into that.
Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.
The Scare Salon 