Stupid-Awesome: Night Watch

With Halloween upon us, I figured I'd talk about a favorite vampire move of mine, Night Watch. Night Watch is one of those movies that is extremely stylish, and you have to be in the right mood for it. It's along the same lines of the Resident Evil or Underworld movies. It's by no means intelligent writing, but it's fun, and there's not a lot of trendiness going on in it. If you're expecting leather clad supermodels kung-fu kicking vampires, you're not going to get that. It's a very different type of vampire movie. I need to set this up properly for me to talk about this movie and it's sequel. So... in the beginning there was a series of five Russian novels called The World of Watches by Sergei Lukyanenko. (Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, Final Watch and New Watch, which I have no read.) The first novel was turned into the first two movies Night Watch and Day Watch. (Yeah, you didn't misread that. They gave the second movie which was the last half of the first novel the second novel's title. It makes no sense, even when you know what's going on.) Basically, the series is about two opposing forces of supernatural beings called the Others, divided between the light and the dark. They fashion a treaty, otherwise they'd end up destroying each other and the world with it. They create two sets of watches. The Night Watch, which keeps an eye on the forces of the Dark and the Day Watch, which keeps an eye on the forces of the Light. They do this to keep balance until the coming of the Great One who will chose one over the other for prominence. Of interest, it needs to be pointed out that Light does not equal good, nor does Dark equal bad. Both sides are fully capable of being douchebags. It's an interesting mixture of various supernatural entities on both sides, with vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, sorcerers, succubi, and others filling out the ranks. (Kinda like the old awesome Capcom game, Darkstalkers.) There's a sort of dimension that exists between worlds called 'The Gloom', which isn't really explained too well in either of the movies. It's best to describe it as the Astral Plane. (Strange how I could go onto Wikipedia and copy and paste the entire description of what the novels call the Gloom, but as a comic nerd, I can sum it with two simple words and y'all know exactly what I mean.) That's pretty much the set up for the movie, that is established before the main character pops on.

Not exactly Kate Beckensale in skintight leather,  but less
silly looking than Wesley Snipes in tight leather trenchcoat.
(Seriously Blade, what were you wearing?!)

It's kinda hard to explain what the movie is about... The movie protagonist is a Russian loser by the name of Anton who get's suckered into this cold war between the Light and the Dark, because he makes some really stupid mistakes involving a now-former lover. The movie mainly involves the coming of a Vortex that will consume the world. It's a simple sounding plot, but it's really... It's an interesting type of movie, and one that's kinda rare: The type where the movie's universe is more interesting than the movie itself. Underworld's another one, where you like the backstory, but unless Kate Beckensale is strutting around in her leather costume, yer kinda bored. You know those people who role play heavily and consider themselves writers? They'll spend months, perhaps even years developing this world, thinking about how magic and the rules all fit together, making it an interesting world to play in... But once they start writing the story, it's sorta... Flat? Well, that's kinda what the movie is like.

There's a lot of stuff to like about the movie. The visuals are neat, the universe is fascinating, the characters are likable, there's some real inventive stuff going on. You want to explore this universe. But the movie's story doesn't let you. This is mainly due to the fact the movie actually had a rather small budget, comparable to the budgets of cinematic masterpieces like Mansquito and Sharktopus... So it wasn't able to do too much exploring beyond what we get. Yet, the production values visually look like something with a high budget. It's one of those movies that it's interesting to see how it got done, and the results of these efforts. Everything about it is actually rather great... Except the story. And the the reason for that is that the movie is based (roughly) on the first story in the first novel called Destiny, but it's not the whole novel. (There's like three stories in there.) It's really, just a set up for the entire universe, it feels that way and it's effective, especially using the character Anton as our introductory eyes into this mysterious world. As silly as it is, it feels like an off-the-cuff comic book style movie, like Darkman. Seriously, it has that over-theatrical flair to it, that makes it ludicrous and yet... I liked it a hell of a lot. I know the story was weak, but it was fun. It let me use my imagination and as a result, I was really excited to see the sequel Day Watch.

Yeah, Day Watch was a clusterfuck.

Day Watch tried to cram several stories into one movie, without stopping to realize that the audience would have no idea what the hell they're looking at. It's like when you watch Men in Black 2 or the second Hellboy movie, and you're wanting them to pick right up where the first one left off, with the same feeling and tone... But they've realized “Hey, we're a big success. Let's throw this restraint to the wind and get weird!” And you're wishing they'd get that restraint back. Anton, the hero, who was barely able to hold his ground in the first movie, is now training a recruit. There's this Chalk of Fate, which can allow you to rewrite your own fate, allowing you to change your greatest mistake... But with limitations. Like I said, it's fascinating... You're wanting to see where they can go with this, but they're too busy with some other plotlines that go nowhere and leave you unsatisfied. There's this climax at the end, that you suspect was meant to be bigger and almost more epic, on a 'Battle of Minas Terith' level. (And from what I read in the novels... It was.) But obviously, the budget couldn't handle it, and we ended up with this confusing conclusion where you're sitting there wondering “What the fuck is going on?” It doesn't help that where the first movie, Anton served as our guide into the world, now he's a deeper part of the world, but we the audience were still left wondering what's happening. We've lost our guide. And the end of the movie... When you have a device that can alter the past, it does the one trope that pisses the audience off EVERYTIME. I'm not going to spoil it, but if you've seen enough movies about being able to change the past, you already know what the worst ending they can give them. And Day Watch does it. The movie is draining, and all the fun and excitement that was there in the first one is gone.

Director Timor Bekmambetov would go on to produce many other films, including Wanted, which kinda sucked. (But that's mainly because I'm not a fan of the source material.) And he also did Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter... Which was a lot like Night Watch, in that is was stupid-fun. (In many ways, it feels like a prequel to Night Watch.) The first movie is fun. It has no real cohesive plot, but there's enough interesting things going on to make it worth your while. But just don't see the second one. And if you're not interested in seeing the first movie, then at least read the novels. They're actually great, and I recommend them highly. They are very different enough from the movies, and they take the time to explore the world they created, without insulting you like the second movie did.

Plus, there's a rocket bus.

Stooge Rating:

SHEMP