Seeing Double at the Brattle

This week, the Brattle Theatre presents a series called "Cult Double Vision," a trio of double features that should satisfy the completist neural pathways in the brain of even the most OCD film buff.

Today, the Brattle screens Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, the pair of gutbusting slapstick spoofs that made a name for director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The Wednesday offering is Danny Boyle's pair of zombie thrillers, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later.

All fine films, but Bostonist worries that the Brattle is playing fast and loose with the idea of cult movies. After all, those four films were all released within the last three years and played to sizable audiences in mainstream theaters. We always thought that cult movies were those overlooked gems, appreciated by only a handful, through the loupe of their shared nerdiness.

Thankfully, the Brattle makes good with Tuesday's showcase, a pair of Russian urban fantasy flicks, Night Watch and Day Watch. Though blockbusters in Russia, the two films are virtually unknown in the United States. And it's a shame.

The films, based on a series of novels by Sergey Lukyanenko, spin a satisfying, if convoluted, yarn involving a subterranean cold war between competing factions of supernatural beings, the titular Night Watch and Day Watch. Notable for their impressive and subdued use of digital video effects, the films develop an elaborate world of conspiracy, betrayal, and power, which, never mind the vampires, must seem familiar in Putin's Russia.

Cult Double Vision runs Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, October 1-3 at the Brattle Theatre. Check the Theatre's schedule for showtimes.