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From Jason Bourne through to Jason Voorhees, there are rigid rules that apply when continuing a successful franchise. Though director Bekmambetov ticks all the boxes (more setpieces, more sex, more head-scratching plot developments) with career-making aplomb, the second film based on Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch novels is still likely to divide viewers as surely as its phantasmagorical protagonists, The Others, are split into factions of Dark and Light.

Set among a netherworld of seers, shapeshifters and psychos in modern-day Moscow, Day Watch follows the adventures of the understandably befuddled Anton (Khabensky), a rookie Other whose job is to police the uneasy entente between Dark and Light like an infernal Internal Affairs officer. It's a tough call, not least because the dastardly Darkies have framed him for murder, and his estranged son Yegor (Marytnov, a sort of Slavic, slightly sinister, Boy Who Lived) is one birthday away from Kevin The Teenager-ing the ancient truce down the toilet.

Anyone whose idea of narrative complexity is watching Frodo and his assorted bum chums walking to the edge of a hill and pointing – for nine hours – would be better off elsewhere. Day Watch is also a dreadful place to start for viewers who missed the first instalment.

However, for those tired of watching Keanu Reeves out-acted by his coat in the dreary Matrix sequels, and the assorted freaks, geeks and weirdos who treat Blade and Buffy like reports from the frontline, this dense, mercilessly kinetic goth opera will moisten underwear at 100 paces. Even the subtitles judder and explode as if driven to self-immolation by the action exploding onscreen.

As with the over-faithful exposition currently crippling the Harry Potter series, the middle-section creaks under the weight of inessential narrative business imported straight from the source, although the brief lesbian scene will do wonders for the staying power of more impatient adolescents. It's a small quibble, though, for as confirmed by the astonishing CG climax in which Yegor rains a devastating Armageddon of hate on the city, this daring, visually arresting series will cast a Star Wars-sized shadow across the dreams of an entire generation of Russian teens.