Nattevagten (1994) | RETRO REVIEW

Directed by Ole Bornedal — Screenplay by Ole Bornedal.

In a couple of days, the long-awaited sequel to the Danish cult horror film Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten will be released. The original film, which later resulted in the English-languaged remake (also directed by Ole Bornedal) Nightwatch starring Ewan McGregor, is one that I hadn’t seen in several years, so I was curious whether or not it would still hold up. Is the Danish cult genre film still as good as I remember it being? Well, yes and no.

Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten follows Martin (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a young Danish man, who gets hired as a night watchman at the Forensic Medicine Institute. Martin initially thinks of it as a pretty simple job to do, but, eventually, he starts to become quite terrified of doing the nightly rounds because then he’ll have to go and check out the morgue. At the same time, a vicious serial killer is on the loose, and his victims eventually make their way to Martin’s morgue. When Martin starts to behave erratically as a result of a series of challenges proposed by his best friend Jens (played by Kim Bodnia), the authorities start to look at Martin as a prime suspect.

I had a really good time with this one when I sat down to rewatch Nattevagten recently. I hadn’t actually seen this in, I think, maybe more than a decade (even though I’ve always remembered liking it), so I had forgotten about a couple of things such as how creepy and immature Jens and Martin’s challenges are, how they sometimes speak in these meta-commentary lines about film, how happy the ending actually is, but also that Ulrich Thomsen appears for a very brief scene.

Bornedal’s horror hit film has a solid cast, and it is fun to look back on this as Kim Bodnia and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s first big parts. Her role isn’t particularly big, but I actually think Sofie Gråbøl is really good in this as Martin’s girlfriend. She really took me by surprise on this rewatch. She feels like a natural here, and I think she deserves more credit for this one. It is still really interesting to see Ulf Pilgaard in such an uncharacteristic role for him — I think he does a pretty good job all things considered. On rewatch, it’s kind of funny how obvious they make the eventual reveal of who the killer is.

The solid cast, the location, the atmosphere, as well as the distinctive but somewhat dated visual aesthetic help to make this film still feel really nice to rewatch. What holds it back is that Jens and Martin’s relationship and dialogue feel a little bit, ahem, of a time (i.e. really dated) and also sometimes really gross, and, for a horror film, the film isn’t really all that scary. But, hey, for a country that tends to struggle in this genre (even though Benjamin Christensen and Carl Th. Dreyer once found great success in the genre in the early 20th century), I still think this iconic Danish effort is one that succeeds enough for it to still be worth a watch.

It’s a solid time capsule to remind us of how Denmark once finally made a relatively effective widely-loved horror film, and that even though we now have something like Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, which I think is quite good, Nattevagten still remains the one Danish horror film that us Danes instantly will respond with once you ask for an original Danish-language horror flick. 

7.5 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.