Nightwatch - Demons Are Forever ('Nattevagten – Dæmoner går i arv') (2023)

You need to have seen the 1994 original to appreciate the genius of this sequel that takes the themes and look of the original and cements them as classic by reworking the story with a new gender politic, putting Fanny Leander Bornedal in the lead role as the daughter of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's character in the original - she takes on the morgue nightwatch job to better understand her parents' ordeal - and just when you think things are going to be too same-same (moths in the light fittings, alarm lights that threaten to go off...) this gnarly, twisted mystery really goes places!

★★★★☆

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Nightwatch ('Nattevagten') (1994)

This, at several key points, very ugly 1994 Danish horror thriller - that restaurant scene! - spawned a sequel and a English-language remake, so is a movie good enough to warrant that and largely, I think, because of the smiley, geek-chic rizz of Nicolaj Coster-Waldau in the lead, whose boyish enthusiasm and jokey disregard and goofy wide-eyed awe - of things like prostitutes, sex, and death - balances nicely with the dark and dread of his new nightshift work at a creepy morgue somehow linked to a spate of serial killings.   

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW