The Vigil (2020) - Movie Review

Well, this is a nice surprise: A horror flick released during lockdown that doesn’t make me think literal cabin fever is the better option. Not only that, this is quite a refreshing feature within its sub-genre of supernatural horror. Mainly, because it's one of a rare few that taps into superstition outside of the Christian camp.

Yeah, kind of a lesser side effect of Christian ubiquity in the modern era, all things considered, but this already wins points because it shows some variety in its choice of spirituality. Framed around the Jewish ritual of the Shemira (watching over the recently dead until their burial), the film stays tied directly to Dave Davis as Yakov, a Hasidic Jew living in Borough Park, Brooklyn, who is hired to conduct the Shemira. In that is the film’s rather cramped setting: Sitting with Yakov and the dead body until dawn, while spoopy things begin to happen around him.

I’m a bit of a sucker for this kind of psycho-horror, where the main character(s)’s head gets messed around with, but the presentation involved is quite remarkable. While ostensibly a haunted house feature, director Keith Thomas and DOP Zach Kuperstein’s claustrophobic angles make this feel a lot more personal than the typical fare. There is the odd jump scare, but even when they do show up, the pacing and build-up make it worth dealing with. That, and Michael Yezerski’s soundtrack work, which takes on an almost-industrial noise quality that adds to just how unsettling this can get.

Which brings us to Yakov’s character… wowzers. The story around him essentially takes the notion of watching the dead and refracts it through a prism of PTSD (i.e. trauma that makes one relive another’s death), turning the titular Vigil into a chance for Yakov to reconnect with his faith and, in his own heart, make up for past mistakes. That element of PTSD and pre-existing conditions adds some much-needed spice to the more hallucinatory moments, making the heart-drop revelations of what is or isn’t actually happening hit that much harder.

It's a small and rather compacted horror flick, but one that makes expert use out of its space and resources. As much as I genuinely appreciate the visual and even audio aesthetic on display, not to mention the depiction of Jewish theology (which I may or may not have missed the mark in describing here, but that'll happen when most of your cultural understanding comes from watching movies)… honestly, as an older brother to quite younger siblings myself, it’s Dave Davis’ performance in the lead that really makes this worth recommending to me.