At the beginning before the credits, a naked woman (a prostitute), wrapped in a bath towel, greets an unseen male client at night. The scene is a creepy one as she does all of the talking while the camera angle is of the eyes of the guest. Before climbing onto a table, she asks her customer if he still wants her to play dead. The unseen man pulls out a large knife and stabs her to death.

Martin Bells (Ewan McGregor), a law student, has just taken a job as a night watchman (8 pm-4 am) in an eerie city morgue. A strange and eccentric retiring night watchman (Lonny Chapman) escorts Bells throughout the main premises, telling him anecdotes and advising him to "get a radio." The building, unoccupied at night, houses not just a morgue but also a forensics lab where dismembered human body parts are preserved in jars filled with formaldehyde. The hallway is long. In the morgue's cold room, above each covered body is an alarm cord, in case the corpse rises (!) (according to the retiring watchman). The room door has no inside handles. The watchman's rounds include a time clock on the far wall of the cold room, so that he has to enter the entire room to get to it. The night watchman himself works alone in an office at a large lobby unlit after hours. Moths trapped in the office lighting provide a flickering look. On the office wall is a 19th century photo of Lewis Powell (a/k/a Lewis Payne), one of the assassins of Abraham Lincoln. The creaky elevator sticks while strange noises sometimes emanate from the building. The morgue is indeed an ominous place. And for the first part of the film there is genuine eeriness; in the second half the movie collapses.

In the city a serial murderer is on the loose; he kills prostitutes. Police inspector Tom Cray (Nick Nolte) stops into the morgue to advise Bells that a fresh body, a murdered young lady, is being delivered. The killer removes the eyes of the dead women. The cop might have added that a molester of corpses is also running amok. One night the emergency red light in the watchman's office flickers. Bells has to check it out alone as the night doctor is not available for 30 minutes. It turns out that Bells' unhinged friend James (Josh Brolin) has made one of his practical jokes. He had somehow slipped into the morgue one evening and hidden under a sheet on a gurney in the cold room and slowly raised himself as from the dead. Boo! I scared you! Other strange events also occur, and they make little sense. One of these involves the body of a dead prostitute that was dragged down the corridor to the exit door, leaving a trail of smeared blood everywhere. "Why," one may ask? And how could the killer sneak in and do what he did, including clean-up? And how did Martin miss seeing it the first time he was there, in the well-lit cold room? When I first saw this, I thought it could be the watchman dreaming, but no. Anyway, soon Bells realizes that he is being framed by the killer. By the way, the murderer once worked in the medical examiner's office years ago and was dismissed for necrophilia. How can Bells trap the real killer?

The script is below par. Character development is weak, and we never know the motivations of McGregor, Patricia Arquette (his girlfriend Katherine), Brad Dourif (the duty doctor), Nolte, or anybody else. Brolin's purpose is to serve as the red herring. The use of "This Old Man (Knick-Knack Paddy-Whack)" song has a reason that will escape many, although during the denouement the killer whistles the tune, alerting the Patricia Arquette character to her precarious situation. We never do discover the significance of Powell's photo in the watchman's office. The main achievement of the movie is the creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere of the morgue. But the film could have been done so much better! Remade from the Danish film, "Nattevagten" (1994).

College student Martin Bells (Ewan McGregor) is hopefully to make some money for himself by taking a job at the old city morgue. Which Martin thinks it's easy money until his graveyard shift turned into something else. A mysterious serial killer is been murdering unsuspected prostitutes but before he murders them... he makes them play dead. Now this murderer is been stalking Martin on his night shifts by playing sick mind games with the dead corpses.

Directed by Ole Bornedal made an predictable but fairly intriguing suspense-thriller. Which Bornedal remade his own film "Nattevagten" for Dimension Films. McGregor's American accent comes and goes but he is surrounded by a sharp supporting cast like Patricia Arquette as his worried girlfriend, Josh Brolin as Martin's daredevil buddy, Brad Dourif as a doctor and Nick Notle as a police detective. "Nightwatch" was set to release in the fall of 1996 but released instead limited in the spring of 1998. Which the film critics were not kind to it, since the identity of the villain was too easy to guess but the movie is oddly irresistible thanks to some suspense, Bornedal's stylish creepy mood and some light touches of humour. The look on McGregor's face, when his buddy scares him nearly to death in the morgue is priceless. Despite all it's flaws, this is worth a look. Written by the director and Oscar-Winner Steven Soderbergh (The Ocean Trilogy, Erin Brockovich, Solaris "2002"). John C. Reilly appears uncredited. Super 35. (*** 1/2 out of *****).

Ewan McGregor plays a law student who takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue. He begins to discover clues that implicate him as the suspect of a serial of murders.

The setting in this movie was really perfect, i really liked it , it had great atmosphere from start to end and worked really well with the the creepy scenes, they also added some humour into this movie, which i really liked.

The deaths were not gory or bloody as this is more of a drama then your normal slasher movies, (it nothing like Scream or Friday 13th movies at all).

The acting from the whole cast was outstanding, A really good movie

8 out of 10