Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever: A Revisit To Horror And Trauma

Serial killer Doctor Wormer (Ulf Pilgaard) is back after a 30 year hiatus from the first release, Nightwatch 1994. Nightwatch: Demon’s Are Forever is a fun and creepy reunion of the original surviving characters, and Wormer is out for revenge on those who stopped him in the first place.

History repeats

The film begins with Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal), daughter to Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau), the main character of the original. She is in med school and mourning the untimely suicide of her mother Kalinka (Sofie Grabol), several years past.

Martin has lived with toxic PTSD since surviving Wormer’s first attack, and being more traumatized by the death of his beloved Kalinka, due to her own PTSD. Emma has grown up surrounded by tragedy and trauma, and she struggles to find steady ground to stand on.

Martin is a chronic user of tranquilizers and Emma has felt invisible to him for many years. Needing to take care of money that Martin isn’t currently making, she finds out that, low and behold, the same night watch position in the morgue that Martin once had, is open again.

Emma sees this opportunity as a way to figure out exactly what happened and, hopefully, give Martin and Kalinka the justice they deserve.

Darkness never dies

Shudder

Meanwhile the local police are tracking, what they believe to be, a copycat of Dr. Wormer’s. Bent (Casper Kjaer Jensen), a local psychiatric patient is their prime suspect. On Emma’s first tour of the facility, she finds out that Wormer is in fact alive and living in the same psychiatric hospital as Bent.

Emma pulls a few strings and gets help from her boyfriend, Fredrick (Alex Hogh Andersen) to get a pass into the hospital and talk to Wormer. She wants to get a video of him to prove to Martin that he has nothing to worry about anymore.

Wormer lives in a dark, dank room, and is supposedly blind and infirm. She confronts him, talking to him about all of the pain he has caused her family, and records for Martin how pathetic he has become.

What she doesn’t realize, is that seeing her, brings Wormer a renewed sense of revenge and purpose, to get back at the family that put a halt to his original, twisted game plan.

in all honesty…

Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever is a sharper and decidedly improved sequel to its predecessors.

Though the writing and overall acting quality goes in and out throughout the film, Fanny Leander Bornedal’s exemplary performance is what saves it from being downright silly and falling into total mediocrity. For as young as she is, she pilots like a seasoned pro.

She plays an astute, intelligent and resolute Emma, who never wavers at any point in her performance.

Shudder

The nostalgia brought on by the many past characters who show up throughout the film, brings an element of fun amidst the background of darkness and death.

Jensen shines as Bent, with a Joker-esque feel the likes of Cameron Monaghan’s Jeremiah Valeska, mixed with Anthony Carrigan’s Victor Zsaz, in the Gotham television series.

It was hard for me, while watching, to tell whether or not I thought it was a solid, scary film, or a thriller one might see on daytime television.

A lot of the writing is silly and sits on the border of contrivance, but the strong performances and coming together of the old characters do help sew the film together with tighter seams.

Though this film is proclaimed to be able to stand on its own without having seen the first, I think the audience would miss a lot of the nuances and character background by not seeing the it.

Shudder

It isn’t Coster-Waldeau’s most solid performance, but he manages to find areas of painful fear, playing a man who is lost in a traumatized world. I think the way that Martin is written also didn’t leave him a lot to expand upon.

There are a couple decent twists that keep things interesting, and the setup does pretty well preparing us for them, it just felt like there was more to flesh out. Instead, the filmmakers chose a more formulaic approach, rather than attempting to make it truly stand out.

Overall, it’s an entertaining film that horror enthusiasts may like, if they don’t go into it with high expectations. Bornedal’s stand out performance is well worth a look.