Nightwatch can't decide if it wants to be a whodunit or a horror flick, and it ends up not being much of anything. The story involves a young law student named Martin who takes the graveyard security shift at the city morgue so he can make money for school. All he has to do is walk around the building once an hour and turn his clock key at each of several stations. Of course, for reasons that are patently stupid, this requires him to walk past vats of formaldehyde in which body parts are being marinated and mandates that he go through the morgue itself with its full contingent of toe-tagged stiffs. This would give the creeps to the junior high set, I suppose.

When he's not working, Martin either makes whoopee with his girlfriend, Katherine (Patricia Arquette), or hangs out with his psychotic friend James (Josh Brolin). The first activity is easy enough to understand; the second makes no sense whatsoever. James is the kind of guy who picks fights with heavily armed, escaped ax murderers just for the thrill of getting beat up. And to show his loyalty, James also is the kind of guy who gets involved with a prostitute while identifying himself as Martin and later hires the prostitute to commit an act of guerrilla sex on the real Martin, which will eventually serve to jeopardize Martin's relationship with Katherine.

Meanwhile, there's a serial killer on the loose, and Martin gradually becomes the chief suspect. Our suspects include James, of course, homicide detective Cray (Nick Nolte), his partner Bill (John C. Reilly) and the churlish duty doctor (Brad Dourif) who apparently is hooked on speed. It eventually becomes clear that the real killer has concocted an elaborate scheme to frame Martin. But this is totally cockeyed, because Martin is the one character who has an iron-clad alibi in the keyed records of his night watchman's clock. Not that Bornedal remembers that from one sequence to the next. He doesn't manage to keep track of much of anything. Like the fact that the killer evidently begins framing Martin before he knows that Martin exists, or the fact that the killer has relationships with characters in the film other than Martin that prove purely preposterous.

I can say one thing nice, however. In her two or three brief scenes, Alix Koromzay, who plays the prostitute Joyce, is absolutely riveting. She doesn't have the natural beauty that Hollywood normally requires of its female stars, so she will probably be condemned to a life of small character roles. But man, can this young woman act. We'll be seeing her again somewhere soon, and I can't wait.