Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, on Shudder

Serial killers are beyond reform or redemption—but that’s a good thing for movie producers. When a serial killer film is successful, they can always make a sequel, even in Denmark. If you haven’t seen the original Nightwatch or the American remake (both helmed by Ole Bornedal), forget the name Peter Wormer. It seemed Martin Bork and Kalinka Martens survived the killer at the end of the 1994 film, but they never escaped the post-traumatic stress. Unfortunately, Wormer also survived, so he most likely returns to his old ways in Bornedal’s Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

Despite the promise of a happy marriage, Martens was paranoid Wormer would return for her and Bork, she took her own life several years ago. Maybe in a future sequel, we will learn she was really murdered, but Bornedal does go there yet. Consequently, Bork has been a pill-popping shell of himself, who is largely dependent on his college student daughter Emma (played by the director’s daughter, Fanny Leander Bornedal), rather than vice versa.

Obviously, it is an extraordinarily bad idea, but Emma takes the same night watchman job at the morgue where her father worked in the first film. Her parents never told her about the incident with Wormer, so Emma hopes to learn more at the infamous site. However, her family investigation quickly leads her to the state mental hospital, where the blind and supposedly feeble Wormer remains in custody. Her inquiry takes on great urgency when a copycat killer starts gruesomely butchering Bork’s old friends, using Wormer’s old scalping M.O.

Fans of the original will be happy to see Bornedal got the old gang back together again—at least the characters who are still living, including Bork’s somewhat sleazy pal, Jens Arnkiel. The original Nightwatch was a breakout film for both the director and lead actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, so it makes sense Bornedal’s screenplay explores the notion of legacy. Instead of just bringing back the old-timers for fan-mollifying cameos, Demons are Forever digs deeply into the long-term psychological distress experienced by the survivors and how it shaped their offspring—including Wormer’s (just who that might be would be telling, but it is easy to guess).

The Possession: Continuing the Jewish Legacy of Horror Films

Here is a quick question for all the haters demonstrating on college campuses: do you enjoy horror films? They would hardly exist as we know them without Jewish artists and creators. Yiddish films like The Golem and silent German movies such as [Jewish director] Paul Leni’s Waxworks largely created the genre. Horror became commercially viable thanks to Universal Studio boss Carl Laemmle and Karl Freund, the cinematographer or director of many classic Universal Monster movies. Since then, filmmakers like William Friedkin, Sam Raimi, Lloyd Kaufman, and Eli Roth substantially contributed to the horror genre’s evolution. Recently, several horror films have re-embraced horror’s Jewish roots. The Raimi-produced The Possession led the pack, featuring the child-snatching demon Abyzou a decade prior to Oliver Lake’s The Offering. Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal’s Possession deserves a second look when it airs Friday on the Movies! Network.

College basketball coach Clyde Brenek is somewhat separated from his wife Stephanie, but she is extremely separated from him. Their daughters Hannah and Emily are stuck in the middle. During their weekend with dad, Emily acquires a mysterious box with Hebrew inscriptions at an estate sale. She quickly becomes weirdly attached to it. Soon thereafter, she starts lashing out and even tries to frame her father for abuse.

After consulting with a campus folklorist, Brenek realizes his daughter released the demon held captive in a dybbuk box. He seeks help from the Brooklyn Hassidic establishment, but they are too scared to help. However, the chief rabbi’s young, rebellious son, Rabbi Tzadok Shapir believes he is bound by his faith and duty to help the desperate Brenek family. Indeed, things get so bad while Brenek is in Brooklyn, his ex and their teen daughter are willing to listen to him when he returns with a strange rabbi.

Juliet Snowden & Stiles White’s screenplay is based on a non-fiction article chronicling the checkered history of the real-life dybbuk box now in the possession (so to speak) of Zak Bagans. Many of the demonic elements will feel familiar, but the film still fruitfully taps into deep archetypal themes. It is also not as graphic as many horror films, having successfully appealed its way down to a PG-13 rating.

Ole Bornedal’s 1864

It was a bloody year. While Americans were killing each other at the Battles of Atlanta and the Wilderness, Denmark sent out its army to be slaughtered by the Germans. It seems like inconceivable hubris in hindsight, but the tiny Scandinavian country expected to win in short order. Instead, their crushing defeat sent them reeling into modernity, at least according to Ole Bornedal’s epic Danish miniseries 1864 (trailer here), which releases today on MHz Choice.

Although Bornedal is best known for genre films like Nightwatch and Just Another Love Story, he has already had a go at historical dramas with I am Dina. However, 1864 is much greater in scope and touched on still sensitive Danish national nerves. Conceived and filmed as a straight-shot eight-hour feature, it was broken up into hourly installments by Danish TV. As is usually true of sweeping historicals, both the poor and the privileged are represented, but in this case, some of them knew each other before the fateful war.

The reason Denmark was so confident at the start of the Second Schleswig War was because they had won the first one in 1851 so handily. Like many of his comrades, tenant farmer Thøger Jensen made it home to his wife Karen and young sons Laust and Peter, but his infected war wounds are an ominous site. The landed Baron’s only son Didrich also returns damaged from the war, but it his case, the stress and shame of his cowardly conduct (papered over by his father’s bribes) have corroded his soul. The Jensen brothers become a target for bullying, especially when they befriend Inge Juel, the new estate manager’s twelve-year-old daughter, whom Didrich creepily fancies as well.

In the early 1860’s liberal reformist Prime Minister Ditlev Gothard Monrad is openly campaigning for war, stoking nationalist fervor over the Schlewig question. As the matter then stood, the German-speaking enclave maintained a degree of autonomy as a Grand Duchy within the Danish state. For Monrad and the National Liberals, anything less than full Danish integration was unthinkable. However, Otto von Bismarck had learned from all the flukes and mistakes that led to Germany’s 1851 defeat, which would be quite unfortunate for new recruits like the Brothers Jensen. Even worse, they find themselves serving under the contemptible Didrich, who is recalled to duty at the rank of captain.

They will find at least two comrades who have a knack for keeping their men alive: the valiant Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Dinesen (real life father of Karen Blixen) and the leathery veteran corporal Johan Larsen. They both also take comfort from corresponding with Juel, but Peter is unaware Laust violated their unspoken gentleman’s agreement by sleeping with her. All of this family drama and national angst unfolds as a punkish teen working for a meals-on-wheels agency reads Inge’s handwritten memoir to her aged grandson.

The deeper you plow into Bornedal’s decade-spanning saga, the more it starts to click. Frankly, if half the scenes of the bratty young Jensen Brothers in short-pants had been cut, it would not have hampered plot or character development to any appreciable extent. The contemporary wrap-around segments are also quite contrived and unnecessary. However, the battle sequences are impressively mounted and the political intrigues are thoughtfully realized, thanks to Bornedal’s use of the nonfiction books of historian and series-advisor Tom Buk-Swienty as a blue-print. If you enjoy negotiating table drama, his screenplay does a nice job of integrating a good deal of Danish into the narrative without it feeling exposition-y. This might be Denmark in the mid-1860s, but it is clear how dangerous it is to relinquish control of military strategy to politicians and the press.

Pilou Asbæk (A Hijacking, Game of Thrones) might be the most recognizable cast-member, who really goes all in, wallowing in self-loathing misanthropy as the increasingly pathetic Didrich. Jakob Oftebro looks the part of the more dashing Laust Jensen, but Jens Sætter-Lassen gets the better speeches as Brother Peter, carrying them off quite well. However, the real star is the witheringly intense Søren Malling as the battle-hardened, but compassionate Larsen and the real discovery is Johannes Lassen as the fiery Dinesen.

1864 definitely has the look of big budget tent-poles, thanks the crisp vistas lensed by Bordenal’s regular cinematographer, Dan Laustsen and the smash-up battle pyrotechnics. After watching all eight hours, you will conclude Danes are lucky to be speaking Danish rather than German. Imagine if congress and the media had second-guessed George Washington’s strategic retreats, much like what happened to the admittedly eccentric Gen. De Meza? Despite some concessions made to the TV audience (that means you, moody teen with the piercings), 1864 is definitely a smart, grand-scale tragedy that pay dividends to attentive viewers who invest the time. Recommended for fans of old school epics, 1864 starts streaming today on MHz Choice.

Bornedal’s I Am Dina

I Am Dina
Directed by Ole Bornedal
Vanguard Cinema

Reportedly, Gérard Depardieu shipped 500 bottles of his vineyard’s wine to Kjerringøy, Norway during the filming of Ole Bornedal’s I Am Dina (trailer here). One can see why he might need the fortification. His character has a very difficult time adjusting to married life with Dina, the title character of Bornedal’s tempestuous historical drama, now on DVD.

Dina is not a traditional Nineteenth Century Norwegian homemaker. She has issues stemming from a traumatic childhood. After setting in motion the accident that would kill her mother, she is violently spurned by her father. Dina grows up as a wild child, almost completely lacking parental love, except when visited by her mother’s silent ghost. However, Lorch, the tutor reluctantly hired by her father, finds he can reach the nearly feral Dina through the music of his cello.

As Dina grows into womanhood, her passionate spirit captures the eye of Jacob, a prosperous businessman played by Depardieu. When he asks for her hand in marriage, her estranged father is only too happy to be rid of her. After a rocky start, Dina actually acclimates quite well to marriage essentially taking control of Jacob’s business and household. However, her forceful nature eventually pushes him away, indirectly leading to his death as well.

As one character remarks, when visiting Dina, he “always feels death close by.” Like the Mills Brothers song, she always kills the ones she loves. She has fallen into a pernicious cycle that complicates every one of her personal and familial relationships, including her problematic romance with the mysterious Leo Zhukovsky, an anarchist revolutionary or perhaps just a con man.

Bornedal is one of the most visually exciting directors working in film today. Together with his frequent collaborator, cinematographer Dan Laustsen, he has crafted a stylish looking film that makes particularly effective use of the striking but lonely natural backdrop of Norway’s fjords. It is easy to see how an emotionally vulnerable person could lose their sense of self in such an environment.

As an English language Dutch-Norwegian co-production with Scandinavian, French, and British actors, Dina is sort of a European mélange. There are some excellent supporting performances though, particularly from Søren Sætter-Lassen as the kindly but haunted Lorch, who has an unforgettable posthumous voice-over. Christopher Eccleston, of Doctor Who fame, also conveys a certain dangerous charm as Zhukovsky. As Dina, Marie Bonnevie is totally convincing in her scenes of wild fury, but conversely, it is difficult to understand her magical allure.

Bornedal seems to be incapable of making a dull movie. While his style might ultimately prove better suited to a tricky noir thriller like Just Another Love Story, it is still fascinating to see him take on a sweeping period drama like Dina. Decidedly adult in its sensibilities, Dina is darkly compelling cinema from one of Europe’s best contemporary directors.

Just Another Love Story from Denmark

In film noir, love is usually a bad business, capricious and unfair to those who fall under its unhealthy spell. For instance, Dana Andrews falls in love with the portrait of a presumed murder victim in Otto Preminger’s Laura. At least in Ole Bornedal’s Just Another Love Story (Danish trailer here) the object of the protagonist’s affections is a living, flesh-and-blood woman. She just happens to be in a coma. Of course, Jonas, our anti-hero is not perfect either, having a wife and kids at home. Following in the noir tradition, human relations indeed get a bit messy in Bornedal’s darkly stylish thriller, opening this Friday in New York.

Jonas wants to travel the world, but his family obligations leave him trapped in a depressing job: crime scene photographer. One day his hum-drum life gets a jolt of unwelcomed excitement when he is involved in a traffic accident. He walks away unscathed, but Julia Castlund is not so fortunate. When Jonas visits Julia in the hospital, he finds himself mistaken for her lover Sebastian by her large, well-heeled family. Falling in love with the comatose patient (perhaps obsession would be a better word), Jonas plays along, adopting the role of loyal boyfriend, despite his better judgment. The masquerade continues even when Julia regains consciousness due to her lingering amnesia.

So, does Jonas get the girl of his dreams and a lifestyle upgrade? Considering Love Story uses the film noir convention of the dying man’s lament as its framing device, it seems unlikely from the beginning that things will ultimately work out in the end. However, the route Bornedal takes to that point is quite clever. As a screenwriter, Bornedal’s affection for the genre is apparent, dropping one dramatic plot twist after another. (Unfortunately, Jonas’s Revolutionary Road-style angst from being “trapped” in a loving family and steady job gets a tad tiresome though.)

Distinctively filmed, cinematographer Dan Laustsen gives Love Story a crisp, glossy look, while maintaining the appropriate level of shadow and darkness. Despite the flashback structure, Bornedal keeps the film’s intensity level ratcheted up, creating some genuine suspense. It is clear throughout Love Story why Hollywood is aggressively courting the Danish director.

The film is also well served by its credible cast, including a very believable, average-looking Anders W. Bertelsen as Jonas, the ethically-challenged everyman, and Dejan Cukic as his best friend, the strictly business copper, Frank. More than counterbalancing them is the chilling mystery villain, played by the creepily effective Nikolaj Lie Kaas.

Bornedal ties all the elements together in a nasty, surprisingly entertaining thriller. Love Story is definitely for those who take their cinema straight, no chaser. It opens Friday in New York at the Cinema Village.