Day Watch

The second installment of Kazakh writer-director Timur Bekmambetov’s planned trilogy (from novels by Sergei Lukyanenko) picks up a decade or so after the end of Night Watch, as the shaky truce continues between the forces of Light and Darkness, with fitful skirmishes among vampires, sorcerers and various “Others.” This one is marginally more coherent than its predecessor, but far more watchable (pun intended); the first film was an excruciating ordeal, while this one is almost a guilty pleasure. The erratic and unstable narrative still careens madly from one incident to the next, but here it’s leavened with a mordant, deadpan humor that the first movie could have used. (Since the plot hinges on possession of the ancient Chalk of Destiny, let’s hope the humor is intentional; it’s frankly hard to tell.)