Nightwatch Review

With only about six weeks to go until everyone’s fourth holiday of the year - Halloween - I thought it would be the ideal time to break out the horror movies, and what better way than to get started than to review Nightwatch. Not only is this a fresh take on the vampire legend but also proof that other countries make movies besides Hollywood in the US. 

Nightwatch was filmed in 2004 in Russia and was a big hit when it first came out; such a big hit in fact that I only recently got round to watching it. The film opens with a battle in medieval times between two warring vampire factions: The Light and The Dark. But as the battle continues both forces realise that they are evenly matched and will not outdo each other. So the Light leader, Geser, and the Dark side’s head honcho, Zavulon, agree a truce. In this pact the Light create a Night Watch and the Dark tribe a Day Watch to maintain balance before the coming of a “Great One”, who will lead one side to destroy the other.

Ignoring several really obvious problems with this set-up, the film skips to 1992, where we meet protagonist, Anton. Having split up with his wife, Anton seeks the help of a witch to exact revenge. The witch tells him that his ex-wife is pregnant with her new partner’s child and Anton asks her to kill the baby. She attempts to do this through a spell. However, her efforts are thwarted when Nightwatch come bursting into her apartment. Half way across the world, Anton’s ex-wife collapses - even before the spell is complete - and it is unclear whether her baby survived the paranormal attack or not. Meanwhile Anton sees the Nightwatch team, much to their surprise. 

The film then skips on 12 years and we find that Anton has become a vampire and member of Nightwatch. The main premise of the film after that is for Anton and his fellow “good” vampires to try and track down the person who cursed a doctor, who is unwittingly killing other people as a result, unaware of her affliction. 

 At the time of its release a lot of people marvelled at this movie because there were shape-shifting vampires who turned into animals. I will admit I was looking forward to seeing this, only to be disappointed. One of the main characters, who is called Tiger, (guess what she transforms into) only shape-shifts once in the entire movie, and that’s within the opening five minutes. Her partner, Bear, doesn’t even change once. So yeah, a little misleading and a little disappointing. There is also an owl that turns into a woman but again this only happens once. 

That aside, Nightwatch does have a good story at heart. There are quite a few characters and a lot more going on than just the Light vampires trying to find out who cursed the doctor. In fact, this takes a back seat later on when Anton discovers his son is still alive and that he and the other vampires have been protecting him unawares from another bloodsucker.

The film also has some nice ideas, like the shape-shifting and an out-of-faze, faded world vampires can occupy called “the gloom”. When in “the gloom” vampires become invisible to the rest of the world but they can’t stay in there for too long, for some reason. There are also mosquitoes in “the gloom” as well…for some reason. Also sometimes non-vampires can get inside there…for some reason. 

This takes us on to probably the biggest problem with the film. A lot of concepts are poorly explains, if at all, which is a shame because there were some really interesting ideas in the movie. Unfortunately this vagueness also spills over into the plot as well. There’s no explanation to the differences between The Light and The Darks factions of vampires. Also why some have certain abilities and others don’t is also not explained. In a very early scene Anton fights against one of The Dark vampires after he abducts a child to feed on. This vampire has no reflection in a mirror - while Anton does - and is killed by a headlight Anton reflects off a shard of mirror. This gave me the impression that The Dark tribe could be killed by daylight: only for the film to show you several of them walking around in broad daylight some afterwards. So why did the headlight trick work only that one time? There are quite a few more instances like this in the film that are never explained. I think the director just thought “fuck it” and went with whatever was written in the first draft of the script.

That’s not to say Nightwatch is a bad film. The story is good and there are some interesting moments of magic, but a lack of explanation at some key plot points makes it very easy to get lost. 

Nightwatch gets 6/10.