Night Watch (2004) on Netflix
Moscow's Others divide into forces of Light and Dark, and the Night Watch enforces their truce. Its new recruit, Anton Gorodetsky, follows portents tied to a prophecy of a powerful Other.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.4/1057,357 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
Among ordinary people live the Others, humans with supernatural powers who side either with the Light or with the Dark. When their armies met long ago and neither could prevail, Geser and Zavulon called a truce and created forces to enforce it: the Night Watch for the Light, the Day Watch for the Dark. In Moscow in 1992, Anton Gorodetsky pays the witch Daria to cast a spell that would bring his wife back. Two strangers break in and stop her, and when they see that Anton can see them, they know he is an Other too. Twelve years on, Anton works for the Night Watch, and Geser links the portents he meets on patrol to a prophecy: an Other of immense power is coming, and the Dark is more likely to win him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Night Watch (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before Timur Bekmambetov took over, a 2000 attempt to adapt Sergei Lukyanenko's novel had Sergei Vinokurov directing from a script by Renata Litvinova, with Artemy Troitsky expected as Anton and Ivan Okhlobystin as Geser; it stalled on a 50,000-dollar budget until Channel One bought the rights.
- Night Watch became the highest-grossing Russian release ever, taking US$16.7 million in Russia alone, which was more than The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring made there.
- Hundreds of visual-effects shots were farmed out to 16 Russian VFX studios plus freelancers chosen for individual strengths, with artists in different time zones sharing data and images over the Internet.
- The re-edited international version kept the characters' dialogue in Russian with stylized, often animated subtitles; in a scene where Yegor is called by a Dark vampire while in a pool, the caption appears as blood red text that dissolves as blood would in water.
- Night Watch was the first big-budget Russian supernatural movie and one of the first blockbusters made after the collapse of the Soviet film industry, with a budget of US$4.2 million.
