Written and directed by Ole Bornedal, a law student starts working as a night watchman at The Department of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen. His mad friend gets him on a game of dare that escalates. As a serial-killer’s victims start piling up at work, he becomes a suspect. Starring: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sofie Gråbøl, Kim Bodnia, Lotte Andersen, Ulf Pilgaard, Rikke Louise Andersson and Stig Hoffmeyer.

It’s always fun to visit a film from a few decades past and find familiar faces, and Nightwatch has plenty of them. The casting work was excellent given that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sofie Gråbøl and Kim Bodnia have all gone on to have impressive careers, and it isn’t difficult to see why when even thirty years ago, their performances were excellent. Coster-Waldau and Bodnia as Martin and Jens bring to life a couple of lads, daring each other and drinking too much. Then as the film progresses Coster-Waldau gives us a vulnerability, a fear and survival instincts while Bodnia adds interesting waves of darkness.

Whereas Gråbøl brings things back down to earth a bit and her Kalinka nicely rounds out Martin, making him more relatable and charming. As well as that the two of them have a strong chemistry. With Lotte Andersen also in the mix, this quartet has a huge amount of personality to offer and they introduce the film with a lot of energy, which then has a nicely creeping suspicion and lurking danger in the background. Although, perhaps its biggest weakness is also falling too far into the friendships, often getting distracted by Martin and Jens’ classic manbaby behaviour, and forgetting about the larger, more interesting, story at hand.

Ole Bornedal basically takes the long road to finally explore his tale of a sadistic serial killer and their game of cat and mouse with Martin. It’s a shame as the concept itself is strong, the setting is perfect and the direction creates a good balance between the everyday and the sinister. In that sense, the writing can also think itself much more complicated than it actually comes across, not finding as many layers to unfold as viewers might hope for. It’s very much of its time but if you haven’t seen a mountain of similar films, it’s absolutely a solid horror-thriller.

Nightwatch is worth watching for the cast alone and while it can get very distracted along the way, there’s still a captivating mystery at its heart. Like many others it waits until the last minute to throw everything at you and ramp up the intensity, making for a bloodthirsty finale. It’s shot well to embrace the darkness and create a creepy, sneaking under your skin style atmosphere. There’s plenty to enjoy but it had the potential to really mark its place in horror canon and missed the target.

Verdict: ✯✯✯ | 6/10

Coming to Shudder from May 17 to celebrate the release of new sequel Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever