Night Watch

A huge hit in Russia, this horror movie is a testament to how desperate for entertainment they must be over there. Directed by one Timur Bekmambetov and based on the first of three novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, the movie is hilariously awful for the first 15 or 20 minutes; from there on it’s merely awful, a surefire cure for insomnia. The dialogue (in subtitles) is senseless gobbledygook, and the plot incomprehensible. But it seems to be a sort of rip-off of X-Men, with two contending races of supernatural beings called “Others,” one representing light, and the other dark (and also being vampires), fighting it out in a place called “the Gloom.” There’s a virgin from Byzantium in there somewhere, too. And, yes, you read correctly: This is the first of a trilogy, with two more to come. The horror! The horror!