Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor)

A while back, knowing my taste in horror movies and all things scary, someone strongly suggested that I watch Night Watch – or Nochnoy dozor as it is known in its native Russian. Seeing it on sale in a local department store I thought I’d give it a whirl. So amid the frantic chocolate eating of Easter I settled in with a friend to view a film I confess I knew absolutely nothing about except that it was a horror movie. I was actually quite surprised to find it’s actually a vampire flick.

Now before I go into the synopsis I have to say I found the beginning, with its narration in a strong but understandable Russian accent a little at odds with the film launching into Russian with English subtitles. I was already on the back foot. Not about the subtitles, but why they chose to narrate the beginning in English and then switch. Strange. It was only the first of many things I found strange about this oddly convoluted film.

The film is based on a best-selling book of the same name by Sergei Lukyanenko and is the first part of a trilogy. This movie taken from Story One: Destiny.

In the introduction, which is set 1,000 years ago, there are humans with special powers. These humans are called “Others”. The Others represent either the forces of dark or light and an epic battle ensues. The battle scene had its moments. It is very obvious that the director, Timur Bekmambetov, is a fan of a number of movie franchises such as The Terminator and Matrix and borrows heavily from them. That said, I think the director of 300 was a fan of Bekmambetov as I could see many similarities in style. Unfortunately, the battle was a strange cross-breed of Matrix style fighting between soldiers that looked a little like they were about to be attacked by rabid bunnies – Holy Grail style. These were part of a number of inconsistencies that I found all the way through the film.

During the battle, the leader and “Lord” of Light, Gesser, concludes that as neither the forces of light nor darkness are stronger than the other, both will be eventually be destroyed. So Gesser, and Zavulon – the “Lord” of Dark agree to a treaty. The only way to maintain this truce, however, is to form a team of watchers, the Night Watch where the keepers of the light will keep an eye on the side of darkness and the Day Watch to do vice-versa. This is to be maintained before the coming of the Chosen One, a truly special Other, who will choose a side and tip the balance in favour of one side or the other; the beginning of the Apocolypse.

Now before I go further I have to say, on the whole, I found the movie confusing in the extreme at times and very uneven. Some of the effects are brilliantly executed and definitely on par with anything made with much larger budgets in the West. At other times – like the plot – the effects bordered on pure cheese – the stinky kind. The movie showed great promise but I don’t think it reached its potential. This was due to some very corny scriptwriting which was interspersed with very dark and atmospheric filming. This corniness kept snapping me out of the story and left me shaking my head. Had the few moments of Hollywood style cheese been cut, this would have been a much better movie.

This is a movie where you must pay attention at all times as some of the smaller and more difficult to understand scenes are the ones that set up the story. It loses you at times – well it lost me – but I managed to find my way back. I will admit to watching this while I was very tired and that probably wasn’t a good idea.

The movie is filmed and set in Russia and this definitely gives it a darker edge as the poverty and squalor is already present and makes a great backdrop for the supernatural themes, violence and grittiness that are part and parcel of the movie. The dinginess in the real world just gets darker and more sinister when The Others step into the “Gloom” the netherworld between the human and the supernatural worlds which only the Others can see.

The modern day story revolves around Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Kahbenksy).  A man who in desperation to bring his girlfriend back to him, seeks the help of an old woman who seems to be a mixture of fortune-teller and witch. The woman tells Anton that she can bring his girlfriend back but she will not stay as she is carrying the child of another man and unless that bond is severed the child will eventually keep her from him. She tells him she can make the woman miscarry but Anton must accept full responsibility for the death of the child. He readily agrees but as she makes him drink a concoction that is mixed with his own blood and recites an incantation where the audience is privy to the ex-girfriend writhing in agony on the deck of a boat off a foreign shore, Anton changes his mind and tells the old woman to stop. When she refuses to cease, two figures appear and prevent her from completing the ritual. Anton collapses but not before making it known that he can see the presences. This is when we discover that Anton himself is an Other. We also find that Others are a mix of seers, shapeshifters and vampires.

The film then skips twelve years into the future where Anton is now entrenched with the Night Watch in catching out the dark side when they break the rules. One mission is to save a young boy, an Other who doesn’t know he is, from being coerced to the dark side and now both sides are breaking rules.

Add to this is a very confusing plotline of a woman who is the harbinger of doom – literally. Everyone she goes near and everything she touches dies and above her apartment are swirling hordes of crows and gathering storm clouds. We find she is a reborn virgin (of course, it’s the horror genre’s biggest cliché) of legend who was cursed to bring about the “end”. She must be stopped. Either they must find out who cursed her or she must die.

But poor old Anton who has been tasked with mission of finding and destroying the woman has been distracted by a secret he has found out about the young boy.

It doesn’t take much to figure out that this boy is special and both sides want him. He is quite obviously The Chosen One and in his small hands is the power to tip the precarious balance.

The CGI in the film is great and proves that you don’t have to have the big bucks of America to make some pretty slick special effects. The atmosphere is well set up by the aforementioned gloom of the ghettos of Russia, the dark way the movie is filmed and the ever present buzzing of flies which oddly sound like mosquitos but give you the crawlies nonetheless.

It doesn’t hold back with the violence either. Whereas in many supernatural movies the protagonists have extraordinary strength and can survive unthinkable violence, Night Watch shows that when Anton takes a beating, he suffers as much as anyone who is having the holy hell beat out of them would.

The last part of the movie has left the story open-ended to make way for the next installment; Day Watch. Although we see which side the boy has chosen at the end of the film, it is not a clear cut choice.

I’ll most likely watch the entire trilogy, but more to see where they go with it rather than me waiting breathlessly because I enjoyed this so much. I didn’t. It is a movie that shows the Russian film industry is a real up and comer but it was too patchy for me to really like. Some of it was great but it was just too inconsistent. I hope they found their feet more with Day Watch. I’ll let you know.

PS: There is a cute little nod to Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a scene plays on a TV in the background.

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