Week 5: Night Watch
Dir. Ole Bornedal
1994, 107min
Sunday 23rd, Pleasance Theatre 7:30pm
Martin (Nikolaj Coster Waldau of Game of Thrones) is a law student in Copenhagen who needs a job to finance his studies. When he finally does find work, it is as the night watchman in a morgue. The job offers good pay, few responsibilities, and many quiet hours for academic reading, even if it is a creepy place to spend the night alone.
As Martin begins his new employment, someone on the streets is murdering prostitutes, and the victims all wind up beneath Martin’s new roof. The crimes are frightening, but the killer is outside, and the bodies needn’t be feared. Certainly there is no reason for Martin to worry.
But when the detective leading the investigation begins calling at the morgue with a growing interest in Martin, this student finds himself a potential suspect in the grisly murders. As Martin tries to figure out a way to prove he is not a killer, he finds that the police may be the least of his worries, for the bodies in his care—the morgue’s newest tenants—have begun acting quite strangely.
Fusing the serial killer film with suggestions of the supernatural—and even a hint of the college comedy—and filmed in a style which owes as much to classic haunted house pictures as it does to murder mysteries, Nightwatch gradually moves from normal, to weird, to outright bizarre as the killer, the cops, and the corpses all close in on Martin and turn his new job into the worst decision he’s ever made.
Written by Mr Phil