The Vigil
U/A: Horror, thriller
Dir: Keith Thomas
Cast: Dave Davis, Lynn Cohen, Menashe Lustig

Writer-director Keith Thomas’ debut feature is a horror movie set in the Orthodox Jewish community of Brooklyn.  Yakov (Dave Davis), a young man suffering from PTSD following his young brother’s traumatic death and undergoing therapy with support group follow-ups, knows he needs to work to survive. So, despite having recently quit the sectarian Jewish community, he gets pulled back in to serve as a shomer, keeping vigil over a dead body so that its soul stays protected until its burial.

It’s a nightmarish experience for him since it brings back all his fears into play while etching out a ghost/monster (dybbuk — Yiddish for evil spirit) potential transposition from the dead host to a live one. The narrative covers just one night of hell and the chilling trauma envisaged here is highly suggestive and likely to give you the heebie-jeebies. The film does not employ the much overused ‘by the numbers’ jump scare tradition expected from regular horror flicks. Instead, we have a systematic psychological build-up that engages your thinking while spinning out an imminently logical framework for what transpires on screen.