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.

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.

A solid slow burn that really heats up. Dark and unsettling. The type of film that gets under your skin and stays with you. Jewish horror films are an untapped well. We need to see more!

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.

A good and original premise in a genre that recycles ideas to death. The problems were it was slow and hard to follow in spots. The other being the cinematography. The whole movie is very visually dark. Perhaps their attempt at film noir, but it was too much. It was distracting and again, made it hard to follow.