In 1992 Moscow, Anton Gorodetsky (Russian: Антон Городецкий) visits a witch named Daria and asks her to cast a spell to return his wife to him, agreeing that she should miscarry her illegitimate child as part of it.

In the film's climax, Anton prevents a catastrophic storm from leveling Moscow, when he realizes that Svetlana is an Other, and begins teaching her to control her power.

In 2000, an independent Moscow company invited a director from St. Petersburg, Sergei Vinokurov, the script was written by Renata Litvinova.

Artemy Troitsky was expected to star in the film as Anton Gorodetsky, and for the role of the light magician Geser Ivan Okhlobystin was chosen.

[5] Part of the challenge for such a big-budget fantasy film was creating hundreds of visual effects (VFX) shots to which a modern audience is accustomed.

The song played in the credits of the international version of the movie are "Shatter" and "Tender", both of which were performed by the Welsh rock band Feeder.

The song played during the end credits of the American release of Night Watch is "Fearless" by The Bravery and part of the movie's score.

[citation needed] The original score album by Yuri Poteyenko was released in 2021 by the Russian label Keepmoving Records in a limited edition with 300 copies.

Other than a London premiere at the Odeon West End as part of the Frightfest horror film festival, that screened amid heavy security on 28 August 2005,[10] the first European country outside CIS was Spain where it was released on 2 September 2005.

Night Watch holds a 60% rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 130 reviews, with an average score of 6/10; the consensus states: "This Russian horror/fantasy film pits darkness and light against each other using snazzy CGI visuals to create an extraordinary atmosphere of a dank, gloomy city wrestling with dread.

[12] Leslie Felperin from Variety noted the film's allusions to various classic sci-fi and horror pictures and praised the Moscow setting, eccentric characters, and lavish special effects.

[13] Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote that the picture is "narratively muddled and crammed with many more vampires, shape-shifters and sorcerers than one movie can handle, but it bursts with a sick, carnivorous glee in its own fiendish games".

[15] In 2010, Empire published a list of one hundred best films in the history of world cinema — Night Watch took the hundredth place in it.

The project was started by the writer Sergei Lukyanenko as a nod to popular (illegal) fan re-dubs by "Goblin" (Dmitry Puchkov).