Nattevagten – Dæmoner Går I Arv (2023) | REVIEW

Directed by Ole Bornedal — Screenplay by Ole Bornedal.

The long-awaited sequel to the once locally groundbreaking Danish horror hit Nattevagten (international title: Nightwatch — though not to be confused with the American remake of the same name also directed by Ole Bornedal) starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau — long before he became a part of a global sensation with Game of Thrones — is finally here. Back then Ole Bornedal shook audiences with a fresh horror film that showed the local film industry that, of course, strong Danish filmmakers have it within themselves to make competent horror films, even though the Danish film industry only rarely shows that it is capable of such things. Even today effective Danish horror films are few and far between. So, has Ole Bornedal caught lightning in a bottle yet again with his horror sequel? Well, to a certain extent. While Nattevagten: Dæmoner Går i Arv (international title: Nightwatch – Demons Are Forever) admittedly does suffer from familiarity, it is still a fairly entertaining sequel about the next generation trying to clear up their parents’ mistakes.

Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten: Dæmoner Går I Arv follows a young medical student named Emma (played by Fanny Leander Bornedal). But Emma isn’t just any med-student, she also happens to be the daughter of the original film’s titular night watchman Martin (still played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his wife Kalinka (once played by Sofie Gråbøl). We learn that, in between these two films, Kalinka has died by suicide — due to not being able to move on from the trauma inflicted upon her in the first film — and that her daughter was the one who found her lifeless body. The remaining family members are still reeling from their loss, with Martin now being a shell of his former self and Emma asking outright whether she will inherit her mother’s suicidal behavior.

The exact reason for her mother’s suicide is unclear to Emma until she rummages through her mother’s belongings and finds newspaper clippings detailing what happened to her mother and her father back when the police inspector-turned-serial killer Peter Wörmer (still played by Ulf Pilgaard) set his sights on her parents. Curious, needing money, and insisting that she should help her father get over the trauma that still consumes him, Emma decides to take up her father’s old student job as the night watchman at the Department of Forensic Medicine and, later, confront Wörmer, whose health has deteriorated significantly. By doing this she unwittingly inspires a young unstable individual (played by Casper Kjær Jensen) to set out to be a copycat killer.

Whether we’re talking about Scream, Halloween, or The Exorcist, it is clear for all to see that there are plenty of legacy sequels in the horror genre. Like with most legacy sequels, they tend to rely on returning characters and a narrative structure that is similar to the original film. They are all about recapturing what worked and appealing to nostalgia by following a set and relatively fool-proof formula. While I would’ve loved to be able to claim that Bornedal’s Nattevagten: Dæmoner Går I Arv has found its own original path that just isn’t the case. While there are a lot of things that I like about the long-awaited Nattevagten sequel, I feel that its potential is limited by its reliance on repeating the original film. While I won’t divulge specifics here, this film follows similar story beats and character types, and this sequel even has a bit about mistaken identity just like in the first film. The film doesn’t just repeat its own tricks, it also borrows quite obviously from films like Don’t Breathe, Halloween, and The Silence of the Lambs.

Having recently rewatched the original Danish horror hit and really liking what Sofie Gråbøl did in that film, I approached this sequel with some skepticism precisely because her character had — based on marketing — been written out of the film. As I just stated in my description of the premise, we are told in one of the very first scenes of the film that Sofie Gråbøl’s Kalinka has died by suicide since the events of the first film, and this film never lets you forget about that — as it repeats it over and over again. Her absence is part of the reason for Emma’s motivation in this film. But while the film mostly succeeds in spite of Gråbøl’s absence, I did feel her absence and it is a shame that they couldn’t find a place for her in the story. One of the reasons for this is that the ending of the first film is such a happy ending for all four of the principal characters that to now reveal them to be miserable — or dead — because of the first film’s trauma doesn’t feel completely honest when compared to that original ending (the original film ended with a joke and a happy wedding ceremony).

To pick up the action now with legacy characters deeply depressed is fast becoming a well-worn trope in legacy sequels, so Nattevagten: Dæmoner Går I Arv is no different from so many of its ilk. If you ignore how the film borrows from tropes and formulas, you might argue that to still be suffering from trauma due to having previously been framed for murder and surviving an attack by a serial killer is quite logical, and, while I would agree that it certainly makes more sense than the unrealistically happy ending of the first film, I do think it is tough to get over how swiftly this film negates that sugary sweet original ending.

With Sofie Gråbøl noticeably absent, it is nice to see actors like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kim Bodnia, Ulf Pilgaard, and Niels Anders Thorn return to the parts they once played. However, I should also mention that it is really strange that not just Sofie Gråbøl but also Lotte Andersen is nowhere to be seen in this film. While Gråbøl’s character was written out of the film, Lotte Andersen’s character has been recast. I don’t know the reasoning for these decisions, but it really is a shame to have two of the four original friends in the first film be out of the picture.

But, again, the three actors most often associated with this film — Kim Bodnia, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Ulf Pilgaard — are all back. Of the three, Coster-Waldau’s part is definitely the most significant based on screen time. In the first half of the film, Coster-Waldau’s Martin has become a somewhat unresponsive pill addict who is receiving cash benefits, and it is tough to recognize the original character. In that first half, Coster-Waldau is given multiple scenes in which he is tasked with reacting to his daughter’s revelations about digging into the trauma of her family, and these scenes aren’t as effective as they ought to be. However, as the plot develops and his character gradually ‘awakens,’ he is finally asked to play a version of the character that is closer to the Martin of the first film.

While one of their scenes together is quite silly (it is very much a wish-fulfillment scene for men of a certain age), I really enjoyed all of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Kim Bodnia’s scenes together. It is very clear for all to see that Coster-Waldau lights and livens up when paired with his old scene partner, Kim Bodnia, who makes a very memorable appearance once he finally shows up at Martin’s door. Bodnia’s Jens feels a lot more like the kind of daring, challenge-inspired Gen X rebel that we know from the original hit than Coster-Waldau’s Martin initially does. While his lines aren’t as boundary-testing as they were in the original film, his lines feel like something his character would say at that stage of his life.

I should mention Ulf Pilgaard’s appearance. Without going into spoilers, I will say that this version of the serial killer is quite different precisely because we’re now seeing a character who has been locked up for years and has clearly been affected by that. I thought Pilgaard — the veteran Danish actor and revue star who has essentially become the face of late 20th Century Danish horror — did the most with what he was given by turning in a genuinely creepy performance as the elderly serial killer.

Then, of course, there is the new cast, which, essentially, consists of modern versions of the original film’s character types. In the lead role, Ole Bornedal has cast his daughter Fanny Leander Bornedal, and she turns in a relatively solid performance as the film’s principal character, who won’t take no for an answer in her attempt to pick up the puzzle pieces scattered on the floor in the wake of her mother’s death. Her character rejects all of the warnings that she is met with and decides to face the demons of her family’s past head-on and look them in the eye. Some of this does stretch credulity, but it mostly works.

She is paired with Alex Høgh Andersen (her love interest — in a way this film’s version of Gråbøl’s Kalinka), as well as the will-they-won’t-they oddball couple of the very direct Maria and the nerdy Sofus, played by Nina Rask and Sonny Lindberg, respectively (essentially playing this film’s versions of Jens and Lotte, i.e. Kim Bodnia and Lotte Andersen’s characters from the original film). They make for a fun and quirky friend group, which I really enjoyed watching. Nina Rask is probably the standout of the three young actors who support Fanny Leander Bornedal, but they all make the most of what they’re given.

In the original film, Bornedal included many lines with meta-dialogue, rebellious attitudes, and indecent challenges, and here he has modernized the dialogue a fair bit. Instead of having his male characters compete in a game of one-upmanship that involves sleeping with sex workers (like in the first film), now the principal male love interest asks for consent as he gets into bed with Fanny Leander Bornedal’s character, while Nina Rask gets to be the kind of talk-happy motormouth character that Kim Bodnia would’ve played if it had been made thirty years ago. However, I should also add that the dialogue is sometimes jarringly unnatural with its use of English words and phrases that always took me out of the film, and, honestly, this may be my biggest issue with the film.

The final notable young cast member is Casper Kjær Jensen who gets to unleash himself in ways that make his unstable character relatively frightening to watch. While his opening scene (an interrogation) didn’t work as well for me as intended, the sequence in which we see him in the background and out-of-focus as he is following Fanny Leander Bornedal’s Emma might be the most hair-raising thing about the entire film for me. As such, all of the members of the young principal cast make positive impressions with what they were given to work with. I should also mention that Sonja Richter and Paprika Steen also make notable appearances as a psychiatrist and a weary and unimpressed police inspector, respectively. Steen’s character has been designed in such a way that she stands out (it’s not just how she speaks and acts, she’s also covered in make-up that makes her look unpredictable, unkempt, and bruised), but, in certain scenes, her elaborate character design took me out of the film, even though Steen does exactly what is asked of her.

While I am critical of story structure familiarity and nit-picky about both dialogue choices and certain decisions related to how a specific character has been written out of the sequel, there are a lot of things that I like about the sequel and these aren’t just limited to new and returning actors’ performances and appearances. I’ve already pinpointed the sequence in which Casper Kjær Jensen’s character is out of focus, but I should also mention that the film gets more than enough out of an effective horror-thriller location — i.e. the place that Wörmer has been locked up for all these years — even though its inspirations are a little bit too obvious (and even though the nature and specifics of this confinement probably aren’t very realistic). Furthermore, while Bornedal’s film doesn’t get quite as much out of the rooms and hallways of the Department of Forensic Medicine as he did back in the day (perhaps in part because Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Dan Laustsen hasn’t made his return for the sequel), Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten: Dæmoner Går I Arv does manage to get you to the edge of your seat through tension-heavy sequences, lots of blood, and eerie sound work, including the repeated unmistakable and frightening sound of a utility knife.

Nattevagten: Dæmoner Går I Arv — Ole Bornedal’s sequel to his own Danish 1990s horror classic Nattevagten — admittedly doesn’t reinvent the wheel. If Nattevagten proved that the Danish film industry could produce good horror films, then its modern sequel proves that Danish filmmakers can execute on the formula of legacy sequels effectively. It never quite reaches the highest highs of the original iconic Danish horror hit (and it won’t be as iconic), but it is an entertaining and relatively satisfactory sequel that every so often reminds you of just how impactful the original film was. Occasionally there are indications that this film could’ve been more of a cultural dialogue between generations and had a little bit more to say, but it stops just short of fully carrying out that idea. Rather, Bornedal has followed a relatively fool-proof legacy sequel formula in order to deliver a modern update on the original film by way of a nostalgic sequel about generational trauma, but also the new generation’s attempt to confront the past and extinguish its harmful flame.

6.7 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.