The Vigil

The Vigil has the merit of taking place on a road rarely trodden by horror films: Jewish folklore. And that's about the only original thing about the film, which follows scenes already seen hundreds of times, with a hero with heavy post-traumatic stress in the background.

Despite an original starting idea and an interesting horrific setting, The Vigil seriously struggles to excite the viewer. The usual jump scares and sudden appearances do not work. The soundtrack, all shrill saturated screams, seems more frightened than the viewer. The misadventures of the protagonist are underwhelming, and the feeling of déjà-vu that reigns makes the film banal.

Quite disappointing, as the first half of the moving was promising, and I was excited to watch a horror movie with a Jewish backdrop.

Tense, atmospheric and at times, genuinely scary, the movie has a great emotional and essential story about trauma and its manifestation. Told from the perspective of a man traumatised, himself, the movie explores the dark history of anti-semitism. I felt invested in the emotionally resonant story about loss and hope. I would just complain about the lack of threat by the demon throughout second half, making the proceedings feel less impactful. And also, it is not a really scary film, per se, but there are moments of gold here that work.

Whilst this is a low budget film the tight story doesn't really need a big budget. It would have added nothing to what you will see here. Good script, acting, directorship and editing. It becomes quite clear, no spoilers here, that evils forces here feed on past guilt even if guilt should not be felt for events you had no control over. I was a bit unsure if the main character had been purposely offered the Vigil to deal with his mental trauma or if it was coincidental. I may have lost focus on whether it was as the film is unsettling and quite disturbing at times. I will not go in to the plot anymore in case of spoilers but being a Catholic it was very interesting to see this from a Jewish religion and culture perspective and the second I have recently the other being the 2012 film The Possession which I found excellent. The Possession was a more of a more frightening and big event film but this film is more gentle and disturbing story. I can't say how accurate the portraying of Jewish religion and culture is of either but for me from a different perspective as I am not an expert on their beliefs actually added to the effect and power of both.

I recommend this as a frightening, slow burning movie despite it not being overlong so overall a solid 7/10.

Quite original with the setting and the scare-jumps for this movie. I enjoyed it from start to end, and found the main actor to be a very good and believable character. The only reason that I did not rate this movie even higher was because the main climax of the horror lasted less than 5 minutes and I was expecting more from that aspect.

Sorry about the title, I'm not familiar with Jewish culture and religion.

As for the movie, I thought it was mostly enjoyable, but the reason for the 5 stars is because there isn't enough scares throughout the movie to call it a good horror flick.