The Vigil | Film Review

Horror films today often fall into essentially the same three camps: vile contests for cheap jump scares amplified by grotesque special effects, societal observations amplified into horrific nightmares of everyday reality, and quiet tension burners that trust their audience to remain engaged while the story unfolds as a character engages their surroundings. The Vigil is writer-director Keith Thomas’ atmospheric take on the latter concept, and what a remarkable debut film it is.

Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis) is an unassuming young man with minimal social skills, a vague grasp on technology, and minimal prospects for financial viability. In order to make a little cash, and despite recently leaving his Jewish community, Dave agrees to provide services as a “shomer” for Mrs. Litvak (Lynn Cohen). A shomer is a person in the Jewish faith who sits over the corpse of someone until burial to protect the body of the deceased. Yakov soon learns that his ward, Mr. Litvak, was presumably tortured by a demon known as a mazzik for years, and now it is searching for a new host.

Dave Davis is the centerpiece to The Vigil; everything we witness (or think we do) is presented through the eyes of Yakov. Keith Thomas’ screenplay utilizes flashbacks to illuminate the audience on what facilitated Yakov’s departure from the Jewish faith, and Davis conveys the remainder of Yakov’s character work through mild mannerisms and ever-growing paranoia with an ease that allows us to become immediately immersed in the terrors at hand.

Adding to Davis’ layered performance is Lynn Cohen’s stellar turn as Mrs. Litvak. At any given moment, Cohen’s character could be suffering from grief, dementia, or be completely lucid. We never know, and it is this constant guessing that directly contributes to our own fears for Yakov’s situation, as the inability to know exactly where Mrs. Litvak stands at any giving moment is a prime component for how effective our own fears of the mazzik are.

The majority of what transpires in The Vigil occurs within the confining walls of Mrs. Litvak’s humble home. It is a tightly spaced location, and Thomas wisely makes the most of the elements while allowing time necessary for a scene to live and breathe.  At times, Thomas will fixate his camera on one static shot for just enough time that we worry we might’ve missed a vital clue, at other times his camera whips around corners akin to the early works of Sam Raimi (minus the blood splatter). Angles and shots are varied enough to retain our interest as we discover the truth of what is happening to Yakov, as well as keeping the audience deeply vested in “what’s going to happen next?”.

The Vigil is a modern, innovative spin on classic demonic storytelling, with a deep respect for Jewish culture. Keith Thomas has delivered this year’s first must-see horror film, and emerges as a burgeoning talent to watch in the coming years.

Follow our further discussion on The Vigil via this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: