From the Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday, July 30, 1998.
Fans of the Seven and Kiss the Girls school of slick, sick modern horror are in for some severe stomach-churning at he hands of Nightwatch.
Ode Bornedal has given us an English remake of his 1995 Danish thriller Nattevagten. His work resonates with the brutal confidence of a filmmaker who knows who to work an audience.
Then again, something would have been amiss if Bornedal wasn't able to extract maximum chills from Nightwatch's eerie central setting - a city morgue.
Ewan McGregor stars as Martin Bells, a law student with a part-time job on the midnight-to-dawn shift in the morgue.
When someone begins interrupting the sleep of the dead he is supposed to be guarding, police inspector Cray - (Nick Note) draws up a list of suspects.
Martin's involvement with a recently deceased prostitute doesn't exactly leave him smelling of roses. The same goes for his friend with a death wish, James (Josh Brolin).
Much of Nightwatch walks a very thin tightrope between tacky terror and genuine suspense. Bornedal also makes the fascinating move of revealing the killer well before the final act. The movie loses none of its momentum as a result.
For the most part, Nightwatch is an exemplary excursion into the twilight zone. But be aware of a few departments where this film nodes off on the job - Scot McGregor's poor impersonation of an an American, and some unnecessarily graphic gore.