The sequel to the 2004 Russian blockbuster Night Watch – and the second part of a yet-to-be concluded trilogy based on the novels of Sergei Lukyanenko – Day Watch is a big, baggy monster of a film, a spectacular, fast-paced and hallucinogenic epic that is, if anything, both more deliriously inventive and more head-spinningly convoluted and confusing than its predecessor. The story begins a year after the events of Night Watch, and the powers of light and darkness (monitored by the Day Watch and Night Watch) are in a position of uneasy truce that is threatening to break down and unleash a battle of apocalyptic proportions. The catalyst is hero Anton’s son, Yegor, a being of great power who has gone over to the side of Darkness. Can his soul be saved? Can the impending Armageddon be averted? And can our heroes find the legendary Chalk of Destiny (I kid you not; it sounds like something out of Monty Python but was hidden by Tamerlane himself, apparently, after the siege of Samarkand!) and use it to rewrite history?

It this all sounds pretty daft – well, it is; but I get the feeling that writer/director Timur Bekmambetov wasn’t taking things too seriously. He may be quite happy to pinch some of the best bits of The Matrix when it suits him but he clearly has no desire to produce something as filled with pseudo-profundities and cod philosophising as that film. Day Watch might, for all I know, even be something of a satire on contemporary Russia; it’s hard to believe that its showy gangsters and uneasy political alliances are entirely fantastical.

So, if you liked the frenetic rollercoaster ride that was Night Watch, you’ll probably like this – it’s essentially more of the same, but bigger. A note of caution, though, for those who didn’t catch the previous film: it’s well worth seeking out if you want to make head or tail of the bizarre mythology that sustains Day Watch, let alone its utterly bonkers storyline.