Nightwatch is a 1997 American horror thriller film directed by Ole Bornedal and starring Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin, Lauren Graham and Nick Nolte.

A string of gruesome prostitute murders committed by a necrophiliac serial killer quickly point to him as the lead suspect in the investigation carried out by Inspector Thomas Cray.

"[9] McGregor's initial impression of Los Angeles upon flying to the city was that It "looked like the world's biggest caravan park.

"[10] McGregor said he started to miss the "plants and birds and rocks" of the Scottish countryside while making Nightwatch, which led to him frequently watching golf on television.

"[12] Lauren Graham's character Marie, the girlfriend of James, works as a minister at a church, although all of these scenes depicting her in this job would end up being removed in the final cut.

"[13] Around the time Nightwatch was being made, Brolin and fellow cast member Alix Koromzay both got roles in the Dimension/Miramax sci-fi horror film Mimic.

[15][16][7] According to McGregor, one of these reshoots forced him to fly back to Los Angeles and cancel a two day holiday he had set aside for his wife and baby daughter.

[16] Bornedal went on to state that "the actual shooting of Nightwatch was terrific, everything was totally wonderful, and I was free to do as I pleased, but everything suddenly became extremely complicated during the post-production phase".

[15][3] Also added by Soderbergh were American pop culture references, including a scene where Martin mutters: "It's just like one of those movies on the USA Network, the hero sees something weird and no one will believe him".

[15] In another scene, James suggests to a thug at a bar that he could get him on a daytime talk show, and proceeds to reference Oprah, Phil Donahue, Ricki Lake and Sally Jessy Raphael.

Nightwatch was first shown at film festivals, premiering at the 1997 Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema in Spain, where Bornedal won the Best Director prize.

's "Man on the Moon" originally played as Martin is entering the morgue at night following a scene at his university with James, and in the final cut this song is replaced by a more frantic piece of instrumental music composed by Marco Beltrami.

[36] In June 1997, Playboy film critic Bruce Williamson gave Nightwatch three out of four stars, calling it an "eerie shocker", and remarking that "thrill seekers will be scared stiff before the killer even starts desecrating corpses in a diabolical spree.

"[37] In his September 1997 review, James Kaplan of New York Magazine called Nightwatch a "subpar effort", writing, "instead, go see Ewan in full form as a disgruntled janitor who kidnaps his boss's daughter (Cameron Diaz) in A Life Less Ordinary.

"[40] Roger Ebert's review for the Chicago Sun-Times states that "this film depends so heavily on horror effects, blind alleys, false leads and red herrings that eventually watching it stops being an experience and becomes an exercise".

[42] Klady stated that he believed the film's cast had been underutilized, going on to write that "Patricia Arquette is squandered in the girlfriend role, and Brolin has more energy than focus in a badly conceived part".

[43] Los Angeles Times writer Jack Matthews compared Nightwatch to the 1995 thriller Seven, mentioning that "like Seven, it mixes the styles of suspense, horror and film noir, using murky lighting, odd angles and deliberately paced camera movements to create an atmosphere of constant dread".

He said that "Nightwatch is a fairly good effort" and that "the cinematography by Dan Laustsen and the lighting are excellent and add immensely to the overall tension of the piece".

[45] Like Clinton, Malcolm Johnson of the Hartford Courant commented on the lighting of the film in his review, writing: "True to his Scandinavian background, Bornedal has shot Nightwatch largely in semi-darkness, beginning with a violent murder in a prostitute's bedroom".

[46] Comparing the differences in tone between Nattevagten and Nightwatch, Tommy Gustafsson notes in his 2015 book Nordic Film Genre that "while the Hollywood remake opens immediately with a gratuitously gruesome murder, the 1994 Danish version builds a eerie mood much more slowly and is only a pure thriller in its last third".

[6] AllMovie claim "artistic elements of the original gave way to name actors, slicker production values, and the more conventional grindhouse genre approach, opening with a brutal prostitute murder in a pre-credit sequence".

He added, "Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette and [Josh] Brolin do a good job with their characters, but they are playing people more formulaic and less intriguing than the original cast did in 1994.