Mark Reviews Movies: THE VIGIL

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 25, 2021

There is so much pain at the heart of The Vigil, a simple but mostly effective horror film from writer/director Keith Thomas. One man, who survived the Holocaust at the incalculable price of his entire family, has died. Another man, who has also suffered loss and is now trying to adjust to the loss of his faith, must spend the night guarding the dead man's body.

This is the tradition in Judaism: the shemira, the period of time between a person's death until the burial, when the body must be protected from physical and spiritual desecration. A guard, called a shomer (for men or a shomeret for women), watches the body, regardless of the time of day or night, and reads Psalms.

This task should be simple and uneventful, but in this story, there is that suffering—of both the dead and the living. The pain for the dead man should be finished, but it is not, for there is something in the deceased's house that will not allow the woe of the living or the dead to rest.

In other words, Thomas, making his feature debut, has made a ghost story about a haunted house, in which Yakov (Dave Davis), the shomer who takes the job to watch over the body of the Holocaust survivor, must face a long night of eerie visions and creepy happenings. Our protagonist suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, following a death that has left him riddled with as much guilt as grief, so all of this could be a trick of his traumatized mind. It's not, of course, because that would erase the stakes of this story. Instead, Thomas transforms the anguish into something tangible, something that will not let go, and, therefore, something terrifying.

Yakov has recently left an Orthodox Jewish community in New York City. He's coping with the change and trying to adapt to a new, more secular life with the help of a support group. That's where this story starts, as some former members commiserate over the changes and debate if they've made the correct decision. Yakov also gets the phone number of Sarah (Malky Goldman), who wants to meet him for coffee sometime, although our hero doesn't immediately catch the woman's meaning.

Waiting outside the apartment building where the meeting is taking place is Reb Shulem (Menashe Lustig), Yakov's former rabbi. He's not here for a confrontation, as has happened before, but for a favor. Yakov has served as a shomer before, and they need one for Mr. Litvak, the recently deceased survivor.

His wife (played by the late Lynn Cohen) suffers from dementia and cannot perform the duties, and the man they had assigned left suddenly (out of fear, the rabbi subtly drops and quickly dismisses). The rabbi will pay Yakov, because he knows the young man is struggling financially. That's all Yakov needs to hear.

The rest of the film, obviously, has Yakov in that house, as various visions and oddities occur. We—and Yakov, of course—think we see the dead man's body, covered entirely by a sheet in the living room, moving slightly, and then, sure enough, it appears as if the corpse's finger twitches underneath the white cloth. While Yakov texts back-and-forth with Sarah, the bulb of the lamp next to him begins to flicker. Then, the other lights in the room start to strobe. Sitting the kitchen and listening to some music via earbuds, Yakov hears rumbling upstairs and is convinced he can sense a presence somewhere near him.

Thomas does rely a few times too many on cheap, inconsequential, and ineffective jump-scares while establishing the story's premise and the house's spooky atmosphere (A light bulb pops while Yakov investigates it, and Mrs. Litvak appears right behind our protagonist at one point, accompanied by a loud sting on the soundtrack). For the most part, though, the director's methods are about generating an air of the unknown.

Shadows, either real in the light (such as a figure climbing the stairs) or vaguely sensed in the darkness of a room (Yakov stares into the opaqueness of the kitchen, as a voice—either his own or something/something else's—tells him there's something there), are important. Rattling sounds and distant, untethered voices come into play, as well as the awful sound of cracking joints. The camera lingers on the stillness of people or objects, forcing us to anticipate and dread movement, and Yakov's perception of things comes into question—until there's too much evidence that someone or something is in this house and playing some kind of game on him.

A pair of scenes involving videos are inspired. In one, Yakov receives a text message from an unknown party, with a video attached showing him asleep in the living room. In another sequence, Yakov finds a video playing in the basement, and he can see, as the now-dead man explains his fear of a demon that feeds on suffering, Mrs. Litvak in the background, apparently seeing and trying to talk to the young man. What he turns around to see after registering her warning is another, albeit fairly effective, jump-scare, because Thomas takes the time to set up the moment.

In general, the filmmaker sets up everything he needs to, both for the later scares (as the demon's presence works against Yakov) and the notion of trauma as the real thing haunting these characters. An opening and climactic flashback reveals some of the dead man's pain, and Yakov's own suffering comes into focus by way of sleeping and waking nightmares. The Vigil creates the right atmosphere for a fine horror story, but more importantly, the film gives an unnerving sense of pain lingering through this life and beyond.

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