So much average

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Blistering performances.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A bunch of night-watch man are going about their business as normal when they recruit some sappy kid to help them out and soon find themselves the victim of some zombie apocalypse and must rely on themselves and the kid to step up and deal with the zombie apocalypse...The foundation of the film is OK and it has plenty of momentum, but in terms of being an entirely enjoyable film I'm not so sure....It has a lot of energy and plenty of movement and these things do make it fun (it's a terrible film in many respects, but it has enough forward momentum to make it fun).The whole clown scenario at the end was entirely ridiculous and was just not particularly scary; it was repetitive and dull and didn't go anywhere.There were some fun moments, but perhaps not enough. In many ways it reminded me of a poor relation to Shaun Of The Dead and the inherent weaknesses with this film came to the fore much more when compared to the much better British equivalent. Don't get me wrong there is fun to be had here and it works in a kind of trashy, disposable way, but it's generic and forgettable and compared to its imitators it doesn't quite cut the mustard I'm afraid.

After having seen a couple of bad low budget horror films, I wasn't expecting much here but was pleasantly surprised. Yet another zombie horror/comedy in the tradition of classics like "Return of the Living Dead" and "Shaun of the Dead". We've seen quite a few of those in the last years but most aren't even worth watching. "Night Watchmen" is certainly not in the same league as the titles mentioned below but this low budget version has a lot to offer. Besides James Remar (48 Hrs, Dexter) the cast is unknown but the leading characters are believable and funny at the same time. Well written funny dialogue. The mixture of gore and comedy is well done with a couple of hilarious scenes. If you don't like films like "Return of the living Dead" than you shouldn't even bother. Otherwise, worth checking out. Wouldn't mind a sequel..

In recent years, a number of horror films have consisted of little more than small groups of people walking around in dark or semi-dark buildings fighting at times intangible enemies. Some succeed, some do not. "The Night Watchmen" succeeds. A rock musician quits the music scene and the only job he can get is as a night security guard for the "Baltimore Gazette" newspaper. He has a baptism of fire because a famous clown and his entire troupe who had died from a mysterious illness while on tour in Romania have been repatriated, and someone opens his coffin to take a ghoulish souvenir.Soon, the building is crawling with vampires, and the nightwatch team - four men and an office girl - are hemmed in from all sides. It takes only a few minutes for the viewer to realise this film is not to be taken too seriously. It succeeds partly because of the soundtrack but largely because of a non-stop stream of wisecracks, innuendo and at times toilet humour.

"The Night Watchmen," named Best Horror Feature at the 2017 International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, is the movie equivalent of tasty junk food – the cinematic counterpart to fried Twinkie or an Oreo churro. (The latter available at the theater concession stand.) It's a ridiculous tale of vampire clowns terrorizing a Baltimore newspaper office. And, apparently, legendary Baltimore filmmaker John Waters had nothing to do with it.The co-creators, Ken Arnold and Dan DeLuca, play two of the security guards. Arnold's Ken is the nominal leader, while DeLuca's Luca is the mysterious, scary one. The team of watchmen is rounded out by Kevin Jiggetts, playing Ken's sidekick Jiggetts, a pot-loving African-American Jew, and Max Gray Wilbur as a washed-up rock musician in his first night on the job.Following their mysterious deaths while performing in Romania, Baltimore icon Blimpo the Clown and his troupe are shipped home for medical testing. After a delivery mix-up leaves Blimpo's coffin at the newspaper building instead of the medical facility down the block, pervy newspaper owner Randall (James Remar, the only cast member that a viewer is likely to recognize) forces is it open, releasing Vampire Blimpo.The four inept night watchmen and hot-chick newspaper editor Karen (Kara Luiz) must band together like sad-sack Guardians of the Galaxy to fight off the vampire clowns and the newly undead newspaper employees they have created.During the Q&A after a screening at the Phoenix Film Festival, Arnold said he and DeLuca dreamed up the project to amuse themselves between jobs and that their overriding priority was to make people laugh. That they don't take themselves or their movie too seriously is obvious from the look of the film, the cheesy dialogue and the silly subplots.Along the way, however, The Night Watchmen lampoons the conventions of the horror, vampire and zombie genres. The movie gushes bodily fluids, but in a manner that is silly, not scary, goofy, not gory. At one point, after encountering some really disgusting vampire clowns, Karen grumbles that she watched every season of HBO's "True Blood" and it was nothing like this.It's worth noting that, for fans of horror, vampire and zombie movies, The Night Watchmen is full of Easter Eggs that pay homage to previous films in those genres. Besides amusing themselves, the writers clearly are offering middlebrow comedy for a highbrow audience. They hit their mark.###Stu Robinson does writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.