Nightwatch (1994) is a Disturbing and Unpredictable Murder Mystery

 

Credit to Nightwatch streaming: where to watch movie online?

I don’t normally include the year that a film is made in the title. However, since there are quite a few films and I think a TV show with the same title, I added the year so that readers wouldn’t be confused with which film I’m going to be discussing today. 

I barely got enough sleep last night as I write this, but I couldn’t stop watching this film. It left me guessing what was going to happen until the very end, and I was not expecting this film to feel so raw. The characters in this movie feel so real, the acting feels so natural, especially when they find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation. 

I did hear that horror fans adored this film, and I finally understand why this film is a cult classic with audiences!

The story follows a man named Martin, who takes on the job of a nightwatchmen for a morgue. 

Credit to Review: Nightwatch (1994) — FilmCarnage.com

Martin is hanging out with his friends during a nice dinner, with his friend Jens, his girlfriend, Lotte, and Martin’s girlfriend, Kalinka. When Martin announces his new job as a nightwatchman for a morgue, the group overhears the television talking about the recent murder of a woman. 

The group is interrupted by the broadcast when one of the friends spills a wine bottle on the table, pissing off Lotte, and causing the rest of the group to laugh. We cut to Martin going over for his first tour of the morgue, and he meets the nightwatchmen that he will be replacing. 

He shows all of the duties that Martin will have to do, and while he takes everything lightly, he is showing a bit of fear with the thought of working in a morgue. He hears a disturbing story about a nightwatchman in the past who…liked to spend time with dead bodies. 

He was fired (thankfully), but the morgue was terrified of losing their business, so they kept it a secret and hid all of the evidence of his employment there. (why?)

Martin later assures his girlfriend that he will be alright working there, and he spends time with his friends again in a bar. 

While Kalinka and Lotte are being harassed by two men, Martin and Jens make a deal to participate in crazy challenges that involve extreme tasks they must complete no matter what. If any of them lose, they must marry their girlfriends as punishment. 

I was in shock that the two men didn’t bother to stand up for the girls here, but I think the film was trying to prove that these two are pretty dumb guys, which plays an important role for the rest of the film. 

Jens and Martin are walking at night when their girlfriends leave the bar super pissed off, and Martin learns something a bit strange about Jens. His friend is holding back tears, as he tells Martin that he got himself involved with a prostitute named Joyce. He tells Martin to not be a bastard like him, and the duo heads back home, drunk. 

Martin begins his new shift in the morgue. 

Credit to Nattevagten aka Nightwatch (1994) | SPACE RATS From Outer Space

Martin is not exactly enjoying his first day on the job. He keeps having bad scares on his own, the thought of a morgue so close to him finally getting to him. He meets a detective on the case, who is investigating the death of a new murder. He introduces himself as Peter, and he tells Martin that he was once a nightwatchmen too at the morgue a long time ago. 

He reveals the body to Martin’s shock, and he freaks out when he sees how badly the woman had been murdered. The killer’s signature move was scalping them, and wow…I couldn’t stand how realistic the practical effects looked in that scene. 

During another shift with Martin, the alarm goes off in the morgue, and he quickly heads over there, but he first calls the duty doctor to let him know of a possible break in. Martin gets the scare of his life when he enters the morgue, and finds one of the bodies getting up. It turns out to be his friend Jens, who wanted to prank him. Martin understandably is shaken up, and he gets lectured by the duty doctor for alerting him about the ‘break in.’

During Martin’s free time, he is continuing his crazy games with Jens. For one of them, he must eat at a fancy restaurant, with the woman named Joyce, that Jens once spend time with. During a shocking display of Joyce being asked to give Martin her ‘duties,’ one of the waiters asks Martin to get the hell out. 

Jens stops the waiter, telling him he will have a word with his friend. He uses money to make Joyce tell him about the strangest encounter she ever had with a client, and to tell him about how she felt about the murder of her friend who had been scalped. She leaves with the money, trying to hold back tears. 

I couldn’t believe how cruel Jens and Martin were here. Martin easily could have stopped Jens with the way he was treating Joyce, but he chose not to. He even laughed during some questions that Jens was asking Joyce. Man, these guys suck. 

Martin starts to go insane at his job. 

Credit to ‘NIGHTWATCH’ (1994) Classic now streaming on Shudder in preparation for the sequel — Reel News Daily

Martin finds Joyce’s dead friend outside of the morgue, leaving behind bloody footprints. He calls the duty doctor, but it turns out to be all in his head. He invites Kalinka to spend some time with him during one of his shifts, and he proceeds to initiate sex with her in the MORGUE. 

Kalinka finds out later about the games that Martin has been playing with Jens, and Joyce tells her everything about what happened with both of them. Joyce confronts Martin, and he struggles to deny everything that took place. She breaks down in front of him, as Martin watches her, feeling guilty. 

Martin is later confronted again by Peter, and he tells him that one of the corpses was found in a ‘disturbing manner.’ He starts to wonder if Martin is being set up by the killer, and he tells Martin to be careful. 

We cut to Joyce in her apartment, who gets an unexpected guest inside of her home. She grows annoyed with him, but she doesn’t mind once he hands over drugs to her. She takes them, and while she is high, this stranger murders her. Kalinka shows up to the apartment to speak with Joyce again, but she finds her dead body instead, in a disturbing position. 

She flees from the home when she discovers the killer is still there. The killer is revealed to be Peter, and he leaves messed up evidence behind to frame Martin for the murder of Joyce, including his name written in blood. He also scalps her offscreen before leaving. 

Martin is stuck in a fight for his life against the killer. 

Credit to Nattevagten (1994) | RETRO REVIEW — I’m Jeffrey Rex

Later that night, while Jens and Lotte are comforting a shaken-up Kalinka, Peter’s sidekick, Rolf, shows up to tell the group that Martin could be their killer. Jens tells Rolf that Martin is not the killer, because they gave Joyce a fake alias, and they never revealed his real name to her. 

Rolf attempts to call Martin at the morgue to alert him he is in danger, but Martin never answers the phone. Kalinka runs away to go and save him, and she discovers Martin hitting Peter with a baseball bat. He was manipulated by Peter to do so, and he gave in easily, since he was already too far gone by that point from his mental state. 

Kalinka freaks out, and runs away with Peter, now wondering if Martin is the killer. Kalinka tells Peter while they are hiding, that perhaps Martin is not the killer, since Joyce never knew his real name. Peter ties up Kalinka in a panic, and when Martin breaks into the space they are hiding to save her, he is also knocked out and tied up next to her. 

Jens and Rolf show up to the morgue to save Kalinka and Martin. Peter asks Rolf he doubts Martin being the killer, as he handcuffs Jens under suspicion of murder. Peter attacks Rolf with a baseball bat, killing him. He leaves Jens handcuffed to a pole, telling him he will come back to kill him later. Jens cuts off his own thumb to slide out of the handcuffs, to go and save Kalinka and Martin. 

He shoots Peter dead, saving the duo. The three of them all break down, each of them traumatized by what they went through. 

The film ends with Martin and Jens now changed men, marrying their girlfriends. Jens decides to throw in one final challenge, announcing out loud that he does not want to marry his girlfriend. The four friends burst out laughing, including the rest of the people in attendance. 

I think this film definitely deserved a lighthearted ending, because of how bleak the movie was. The build up to the reveal was so good, and I think Peter is one of the sickest villains I have seen in a slasher. He felt way too real, and the nature of the killings was beyond disturbing. 

Even though Martin and Jens were total assholes during the film, I’m glad they were able to defeat the killer in the end.