The Vigil: Movie Review

The Vigil: Movie Review

Cast: Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig
Director: Keith Thomas

Debutant director Keith Thomas' horror The Vigil may be low budget, but it's definitely high on the fright factor.

Dave Davis uses every second on screen to convey the horror of being haunted, both figuratively and literally, as Shomer Yakov Ronen, who's asked to watch over a body until morning. An easy task it would appear, but with Ronen suffering a loss of faith and a crisis of conscience, the Brooklyn night is full of more horrors than he'd expect.

Making great use of sound, and ratcheting up an atmosphere that's worthy of the Blumhouse stable it comes from, The Vigil does a great job of its lead.

With his permanently worried face, and a growing feeling that he's gradually losing the plot, Dave Davis channels everything into the role, giving the shomer an uncertainty and the jump scares a bit more of the emotional depth it requires.

Crafting a soundscape of scares is an obvious thing to do in a horror film, but Thomas uses the sound and dissonance to disturbing effect, generating unease as the usual long slow pan shots down corridors come into play.

In truth, many of the horror tropes are on show here and are all deployed with aplomb.

But by setting the film among the Hasidic community, keeping the cast to a minimum and using the internal conflict to maximum effect, director and writer Keith Thomas has offered up something smartly different to an over-stuffed genre.