Horror Movie Review: The Night Watchmen (2017)

The Night Watchmen is a comedy horror directed by Mitchell Altieri and starring Ken Arnold, Dan DeLuca, Kevin Jiggetts and Kara Luiz (several of whom also served as writers too).

Combining vampires, clowns, slapstick & ‘gross out’ comedy, The Night Watchmen follows a similar trend to many modern horror comedies. In that it sees a group of ‘hapless’ types put in danger & forced to team together. Here it’s a group of night watchmen who work at a newspaper office.

Blimpo the Clown and his circus trope all die mysteriously while travelling through Romania. It’s a national tragedy seemingly and the bodies are shipped back to the US for autopsies. The body of Blimpo ends up at the newspaper office after a mix up where Ken, Jiggetts and Luca are introducing the new recruit to the whole operation.

It’s not long before Blimpo emerges from his coffin looking for a meal & it just so happens that the office staff are working late tonight! Soon the whole place is over-run by vampires thirsty for blood forcing office ‘hottie’ Karen to team up with the night watchmen to try & survive the night.

Let’s focus on the comedy aspect of The Night Watchmen first. Weighted heavily towards silly fart humour & slapstick gross out moments, it does raise a chuckle or two. That being said it also misses the mark a hell of a lot. The problem lies in the repetition of certain bits such as the ‘dead vampire fart’ joke that isn’t funny to begin with.

Other out of touch, cheesy & dated at times, the comedy comes at a rapid fire pace seemingly hoping to occasionally stick the landing.

For all its faults with the comedy, The Night Watchmen isn’t a bad film. It’s well-made for being a low-budget indie flick. A lot of the cast are decent and the film doesn’t drag its heels with good editing keeping everything moving at a fast pace.

The blood is splashed around & almost every character ends up covered in red and black gore.

Unfortunately for The Night Watchmen it’s also going up against a far superior vampire comedy. One also set in an office; Bloodsucking Bastards (or Bloodsucking Bosses). One that nailed the comedy aspect & poured buckets of blood over everything. (Read our review here).

The Night Watchmen is a popcorn flick in every sense of the word. Short and silly, if farting vampires, weed jokes, awkward love scenes and an incredibly cheesy ending are what you’re looking for then this movie provides all of that & more.

[amazon_link asins=’B078HTHX76,B0749V32KV,B01N3M6GMH,0689712928′ template=’UseThisOne’ store=’g0e5b-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’68e4e8db-226a-11e8-9df1-77da5e88cec1′]