Nightwatch

Danish writer/director Bornedal exploits the peculiarly horrifying and portentous atmosphere of a hospital mortuary to the full in this classy psychological thriller. While law student Martin (Waldau) moonlights as a nightwatchman at the city's hospital morgue, a sex killer stalks the streets, leaving behind a string of scalped female bodies. Martin has barely started his new job when one of the victims is brought in and laid out between the serried ranks of corpses. The sly insinuations of Chief Insp Wörmer (Pilgaard) increase his edginess, as the policeman implicates first his old friend Jens (Bodnia) and then Martin himself in the murders. Tightly scripted, with just a drop of wicked black humour, the film delivers creepy hints of necrophilia, visceral shocks and heart-racing suspense. The one unconvincing note is the parallel between these murderous events and rehearsals for an amateur theatrical production of Mephisto. Otherwise, this is the kind of superior genre movie-making where the eerie fluttering of moths in a glass lampshade is as chilling as the screaming, hysterical violence that follows.