In summer 2004, writer/director Timur Bekmambetov’s adaptation of
the Sergei Lukyanenko novel, Night Watch,outgrossed both The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of the King and Spider-Man 2 at its native Russian box office – and rightly so. Despite a tiny $4m budget, the head-fuck combo of awesome visuals and a breakneck pace rendered that year’s blockbusters limp by comparison. Now comes the eagerly-awaited second instalment of Lukyanenko’s good vs evil vampire trilogy and, unbelievably, it manages to outdo its predecessor on every level.

With the apocalypse ultimately postponed in part one, the sequel’s plot picks up where the last film left off – same characters, same scenario, with the ‘human’ realm existing alongside an alternative one populated by opposing battalions of bloodsuckers known as the Light Others and Dark Others.