Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

spencergrande6 Considering this film's rather putrid reputation I was pleasantly surprised with it. Or maybe it's because I haven't seen the original. There's a great cast assembled here - Ewan McGregor is all doe-eyed innocence, Josh Brolin unhinged, Patricia Arquette intense, Nick Nolte wizened and charming, Lauren Graham underutilized, Brad Dourif crazed and underused, and John C. Reilly but before he was famous so he doesn't do much.This is pretty much a shock and awe red herring thriller - with necrophilia and rape and murder of prostitutes. At least Arquette is heavily involved. There's a scene that's either pure genius or tonally mishandled involving the children's song "This Old Man" - it took me so by surprise that it worked for a while, then wore out it's welcome and then became stuck in my head like Stockholm Syndrome. And then in hindsight seemed pretty silly.Somehow, overall, this worked for me.

romanorum1 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).

ashleybrownmedia There are better films out there, sure, but this little hidden gem is definitely worth a watch, particularly if you like the kind of thriller that has a paranormal tint to it.McGregor is very good here (although he seems to possess the weirdest accent out there) as is Josh Brolin and Nick Nolte. The plot concerns a young man who takes the job as the night watchman at a spooky morgue. Things start to play on his mind, and as they do the bodies begin to rack up as a serial killer is on the loose. Is it McGregor? Or is his mind playing tricks on him, and if so who is the killer?Watch and see!

Bene Cumb I am not into horror movies where terrible events happen in someone's mind or imagination, when nothing is going on in reality (with very few exceptions like The Others); it may be interesting to watch and share the feelings, but by the end of the film you feel betrayed and disappointed. In Nightwatch, horror film elements are combined with committed crimes, and the result is not bad. McGregor, Nolte and Brolin perform especially well, female characters seem mediocre, even Arquette, but perhaps her part was not elaborated. I would have shortened the ending: when the doer becomes known, the subsequent scenes are too protracted and the horror-crime film remains a crime feature film only. But still recommended, the film is not too long and the venue (hospital morgue) has been exploited well.