Shining some light on Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever

Some traumatic events leave their mark not just on those who experience them, but those who come after. That idea is at the heart of Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever.

Hailing from Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal, this upcoming Shudder release began its life 30 years ago with the release of Nightwatch. In that 1994 film Nikolaj Coster-Waldau starred as Martin Bork, a law student who took a job as an overnight guard in the Forensic Medicine Institute. What do he, his girlfriend Kalinka (Sofie Grabol) and pal Jens (Kim Badnia) have to do with the serial killer hunting down sex workers in town? Well, you just have to watch the movie to find out.

Or, you can check out the 1997 Hollywood remake which Bornedal also directed. Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette and Josh Brolin fill the main lead roles and are joined by Lauren Graham, Nick Nolte and horror icon Brad Dourif. Even with such a killer cast, fans and reviewers seem to prefer the original over the remake.

"Nightwatch (1994) was a far greater success than both I and everyone else had expected, domestically and internationally, probably because in many ways it was a rather personal story that many could relate to: Beneath the suspense and horror, it was also a generational story about growing up and breaking free from youthful anarchy," Bornedal said in the Demons Are Forever press release. "Only then could the two young men, Jens and Martin, become adults. And now the time is ripe to return to the two characters and the new generations that surround them. Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever is about legacy and the silence in families. About the traumas and
cuts and wounds that are allowed to live through generations."

Aside from the Nightwatch remake, Bornedal has mainly made films in his homeland. However, his 2007 film The Substitute was brought to audiences in the United States by way of the Ghost House Underground, a division of Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures that presented a series of films on DVD in the late 2000s. The Substitute is a super fun mix of sci-fi and horror that finds a classroom of kids trying to thwart an alien who has taken on the identity of their fill-in teacher.

In Demons Are Forever, Martin's daughter Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal) takes a job at the same facility. The 22-year-old medical student is not just looking to make a little extra jingle, she is intent on discovering exactly what happened to her parents. Coster-Waldau reprises his role from the original and he's not alone. By the way, if you want to watch the original for the first time before the new one, do not read the official synopsis and you might not want to watch the trailer because they reveal who's behind the horror.

Speaking of which, if you do want to check out the 2014 version of Nightwatch, it is streaming on Shudder where you can watch it before Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever debuts on May 17.