See Fan-Favorite Horror Thriller Get Sequel 30 Years Later With Game Of Thrones Star
A few weeks back, we shared our excitement over the release of Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, which is a 30-years-later sequel to the original Nightwatch horror regarded as one of the best Danish movies ever made—not to mention that it’s really a good slasher horror film. Well, there has been some development since the trailer just dropped for the sequel.
The release of the Nightwatch sequel is good news for the fans of classic horror who seek to cleanse their palette from having to endure modern jump-scare “horror” fueled by CGI and sound effects.
What makes this release interesting, apart from the fantastic narrative, is the fact that Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau—known for portraying Jamie Lannister—is reprising his role as Martin Bork. For those who haven’t seen the original Danish version of the movie, Nightwatch was Coster-Waldau’s breakthrough role in Denmark in 1994, which he got only a year after he graduated from the Danish National School of Performing Arts. He is now set to reprise his role 30 years later as an older Martin whose daughter now works a night watch in the morgue.
An English language remake of Nightwatch hit theaters in 1997 with Ewan McGregor in the lead role. It was not as well received as the 1994 original.
The sequel, Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, is set 30 years later following the events of the original film and centers on a 22-year-old Emma, Martin’s daughter—portrayed by Fanny Leander Bornedal. As a medical student whose curiosity got the best of her, Emma starts working night shifts in the same forensic department in which her parents were nearly killed by the famous serial killer. Determined to find out what exactly happened to her parents, Emma even tracks and confronts the killer from the original movie, only to become the target of a killer herself.
Besides Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Fanny Leander Bornedal, Nightwatch also features Kim Bodnia, Sonja Richter, Ulf Pilgaard, Casper Kjær Jensen, Paprika Steen, and Nina Rask. Unfortunately, those are all the details we currently know about the film, apart from the fact that it premiered at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival ahead of a theatrical release in Nordic countries in late 2023. The trailer does mention that the killer from the original movie is still hospitalized and that there’s a chance of someone copying his work.
However, movie trailers are known for being misleading, so it’s best to wait for May 17, when the film is scheduled to arrive directly on the SHUDDER streaming service. The release of the Nightwatch sequel is good news for the fans of classic horror who seek to cleanse their palette from having to endure modern jump-scare “horror” fueled by CGI and sound effects. The original movie was a massive success in Europe, and though the critics had some mixed feelings about the original Nightwatch—not the 1997 English version—the audiences loved the movie for its suspense.
Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever will stream on SHUDDER starting May 17.
Both Nightwatch movies are written and directed by Ole Bornedal of The Possession, who also worked on the English version of the original movie for the North American market. However, that particular version of the film featured Ewan McGregor in a lead role and didn’t sit as well with the audience as the original did, mostly due to rewrites and changes the American production company introduced into the source material.
