Nightwatch (1997) Reviews

• Sporadically enjoyable thriller which can't live up to its premise

  rocking_jamie2007-04-07

  Student Ewan McGregor gets himself a part time job in a morgue, he presumes this will give him some quiet time as he studies for his degree. However, in this morgue the dead don't rest easy- it would appear that a serial killer who also indulges in necrophilia is making occasional visits. Could this just be paranoia on McGregor's part? It would appear not as he soon becomes chief suspect... This promising premise is let down, in part, through the unsure direction of Ole Bornedal. The film begins in a vein not dissimilar to that of Se7en and seems to be setting up for a serial killer/thriller style. This soon changes to an approach more suited to teen slashers and then switches to a horror style before seeming to flick between them at will. This mix doesn't gel well at all and leaves the film feeling a little lost at times. Josh Brolin who plays Ewan McGregor's friend in the film plays a character you feel like you have seen a hundred times before in teen slashers: plays by his own rules, pretty unlikeable but has his good side and you have your suspicions about him by the first scene. Ewan McGregor gets the paranoia spot on but is by and large quite forgettable, the same could be aimed at Patricia Arquette. For its faults, there is still enough on offer to merit a watch. The scenes which take a more horror style approach work very well in the morgue and do give quite a tense atmosphere at times. Also, Nick Nolte turns in an eye-catching and enjoyable performance despite playing a role which you feel he could do in his sleep (he's playing a gruff detective). And Brad Dourif is perfectly cast as the creepy duty doctor, his knowing performance raises a smile. The film has enough to keep you watching to its conclusion but will leave you disappointed at not being able to fully deliver on what could've been a very affecting thriller.

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• A Creepy Workplace

  romanorum12017-07-21

  At the beginning before the credits, a naked woman (a prostitute), wrapped in a bath towel, greets an unseen male client at night. The scene is a creepy one as she does all of the talking while the camera angle is of the eyes of the guest. Before climbing onto a table, she asks her customer if he still wants her to play dead. The unseen man pulls out a large knife and stabs her to death. Martin Bells (Ewan McGregor), a law student, has just taken a job as a night watchman (8 pm-4 am) in an eerie city morgue. A strange and eccentric retiring night watchman (Lonny Chapman) escorts Bells throughout the main premises, telling him anecdotes and advising him to "get a radio." The building, unoccupied at night, houses not just a morgue but also a forensics lab where dismembered human body parts are preserved in jars filled with formaldehyde. The hallway is long. In the morgue's cold room, above each covered body is an alarm cord, in case the corpse rises (!) (according to the retiring watchman). The room door has no inside handles. The watchman's rounds include a time clock on the far wall of the cold room, so that he has to enter the entire room to get to it. The night watchman himself works alone in an office at a large lobby unlit after hours. Moths trapped in the office lighting provide a flickering look. On the office wall is a 19th century photo of Lewis Powell (a/k/a Lewis Payne), one of the assassins of Abraham Lincoln. The creaky elevator sticks while strange noises sometimes emanate from the building. The morgue is indeed an ominous place. And for the first part of the film there is genuine eeriness; in the second half the movie collapses. In the city a serial murderer is on the loose; he kills prostitutes. Police inspector Tom Cray (Nick Nolte) stops into the morgue to advise Bells that a fresh body, a murdered young lady, is being delivered. The killer removes the eyes of the dead women. The cop might have added that a molester of corpses is also running amok. One night the emergency red light in the watchman's office flickers. Bells has to check it out alone as the night doctor is not available for 30 minutes. It turns out that Bells' unhinged friend James (Josh Brolin) has made one of his practical jokes. He had somehow slipped into the morgue one evening and hidden under a sheet on a gurney in the cold room and slowly raised himself as from the dead. Boo! I scared you! Other strange events also occur, and they make little sense. One of these involves the body of a dead prostitute that was dragged down the corridor to the exit door, leaving a trail of smeared blood everywhere. "Why," one may ask? And how could the killer sneak in and do what he did, including clean-up? And how did Martin miss seeing it the first time he was there, in the well-lit cold room? When I first saw this, I thought it could be the watchman dreaming, but no. Anyway, soon Bells realizes that he is being framed by the killer. By the way, the murderer once worked in the medical examiner's office years ago and was dismissed for necrophilia. How can Bells trap the real killer? The script is below par. Character development is weak, and we never know the motivations of McGregor, Patricia Arquette (his girlfriend Katherine), Brad Dourif (the duty doctor), Nolte, or anybody else. Brolin's purpose is to serve as the red herring. The use of "This Old Man (Knick-Knack Paddy-Whack)" song has a reason that will escape many, although during the denouement the killer whistles the tune, alerting the Patricia Arquette character to her precarious situation. We never do discover the significance of Powell's photo in the watchman's office. The main achievement of the movie is the creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere of the morgue. But the film could have been done so much better! Remade from the Danish film, "Nattevagten" (1994).

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• Scary remake

  DJ Inferno2001-08-26

  It´s a pretty long time ago since I have seen Ole Bornedal´s original from 1994, so I can´t remember several details, but I think he has done good work with his remake: the atmosphere is creepy and nightmarish, the cast featuring Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin and especially Nick Nolte does a solid job. My favorite performances however come from two supporting actors: the one is Brad Dourif playing a weird autopsy doctor, the other is the uncredited John C. Reilly, who is still one of the most underrated great actors in my opinion! All in all director Ole Bornedal has made a well done remake, which is probably no revolutionary film , but in comparison to Gus Van Sant´s awful "Psycho"-rip off a real masterpiece!!!

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• Have you ever been killed before?

  sol-kay2004-12-04

  ***SPOILERS*** Nick Nolte for all intents and purposes looking like Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster but without the use of makeup is police inspector Thomas Cray who's in charge of a special police task force trying to find and capture, dead or alive, a serial killer. The killer for some weird reason has a habit of cutting out the eyes of his dead victims, all women, and then raping their corpses. It seems that the killer wants to quit the business of serial killing but at the same time wants the police and the law to leave him alone and stop hunting him down so he can enjoy his retirement. This sets up the story for young law student Martin Bell, Ewan McGeror, who just got a job at the local medical examiner building as a night watchman where all the recent murder victims of the killers are kept. The killer plans to frame young Martin as can then be free from being tracked down and arrested for the crimes that Martin will be jailed for. "Nightwatch" has it's share of cheap thrills and a number of twists and turns in it's story but their very unconvincing in how the killer, who you can spot almost as soon as you see him, is so hard for the police to find when his actions are so insane and weird just like those of the murderer. The film-makers put two people into roles that would make you think that their the real killer of the people in the movie. One is so obvious that you just know that he didn't do it and is just a red herring put into the movie to get you and the police off the track of the real killer. There's also a fact that he, the killer, once worked in the medical examiner's office some time ago and was dismissed for messing around with the corpses. All that is in the medical examiners record department which should have been a dead give away to everyone involved just too who he really is. There's also some scenes in the movie that focus on a photo of Lewis Paine, thats pinned to the wall in the night watchman's office one of the people executed for the murder of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. This seems to indicate to the audience that he, or his ghost, may have something to do with the killings but in the end nothing ever comes of it and he's completely forgotten well before the movie is over. There's also a very mixed-up sub-plot in the movie between Martin's friend James, Josh Brolin, and a hooker he picked up at the local bus station Joyce, Alix Koromzay,who he's trying to get Martin to have an affair with her. This moronic attempt by James is to give him a high since it seems that the normal high he used to get with women by having sex is no longer there and even having the hell beat out of him to get high doesn't work either. Joyce's relations with Martin, which are almost next to nothing, has his girlfriend Kathy, Pat Arquette, leave him and in the end. Sure enough Joyce ends up being a victim of the on the loose serial killer and Martin, becomes the prime suspect just like the killer wanted in the crime. The ending of "Nightwatch" had the usual damsel as well as good guy both in distress with the crazed killer having them both tied down on a table in the mortuary and about to cut both their skulls open with an electric slicer. It's then when the person who was made to look like the killer during the entire movie coming to their rescue, minus a thumb, blasting the real killer away and sending him to his just reward. "Nightwatch" is a watchable horror/suspense movie but it's hard to take seriously at all due it it's very predictable and unconvincing story and the killer is so obvious that you can easily spot him well before the movie reveals his true identity.

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• Inferior Remake

  Caps Fan2001-08-15

  This is an English language remake of the same director's excellent 1994 Danish original. Apart from two rather graphic sex scenes, which appear in the original but are omitted from this version, this follows the original plot scene-for-scene. Even the incidental music is the same. It makes you wonder why they bothered really. The film is just about worth watching, but mainly for comparison purposes with the original. Otherwise, it's distinctly B movie standard. Rating: 5/10

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