The Vigil

"I always knew I wanted to make a horror movie. It's the genre I like the most, the one I identify with the most. But I wanted to make a horror movie like I've never seen before. When I was looking at what angle I could take, I realized that I had never really seen a horror film with a concept based on the Jewish religion - at least not totally based on it. There are a few films with biblical elements or a rabbi character, but nothing that's in this world or that doesn't come from this world.... I wrote the script and was ready to shoot it myself. But my manager put me in touch with producers Raphael Margules and JD Lifschitz at Boulderlight Pictures. He told me that if any company was going to produce the film, it would be them. And he was right. " - Keith Thomas

Horror cinema has often been a playground for young directors to bring ambitious and original films to life. It is easy to understand the desire of director and screenwriter Keith Thomas not only to pay tribute to classics of the genre, such as The Exorcist (1973) and Poltergeist (1982), but also to the many other films mixing religion, diverse beliefs and our link between the world of the living and the dead. Anchored in Jewish culture and mysticism, The Vigil places the action in an apartment in the Hasidic community of Borough Park in Brooklyn.

Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis), whose little brother was killed in an accident, feels guilty about not being able to save his brother and has joined a Brooklyn support group to try to regain his faith and a way to forgive himself. Without a job, he accepts the offer of one of his acquaintances, Reb Shulem (Menashe Lustig), who offers him a certain amount of money for a Shomer job (watching over a corpse to protect its soul from any evil spirits). The deceased is Mr. Litvak (Ronald Cohen), a Holocaust survivor who lived his life as a recluse. Yakov Ronen's evening will not only bring him face to face with a demon that took control of him when Mr. Litvak was alive but continues to haunt the premises of his home.

The vigil shows that to succeed in really frightening the spectators, it is not necessary to resort to horrible excesses and a profusion of blood, but on the contrary, as Stephen King has done so well in many books, to start from a realistic situation to plunge little by little into a horrific universe in which survival becomes the real driving force. By the care so much given to directing and photography, The Vigil has nothing to envy the current Hollywood productions. This plunge into urban hell is all the more immersive as the director has understood not only the importance of a good script, invested actors but above all the use of music to reinforce the highlights of the film. One will thus startle many times on his armchair and one will not regret at any moment to have seen this first successful and worrying film.

Distributed in the United States by Blumhouse Productions, we recognize once again the undeniable talent of Jason Blum's production company to offer low-budget films but with an undeniable efficiency. We therefore look forward to Keith Thomas' next film, which will be a new adaptation of Stephen King's cult novel Firestarter.

The Vigil
Written and Directed by Keith Thomas
Produced by Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, Adam Margules
Starring Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Fred Melamed, Lynn Cohen
Music by Michael Yezerski
Cinematography: Zach Kuperstein
Edited by Brett W. Bachman
Production company : Blumhouse Productions, Boulderlight Pictures, Angry Adam Productions
Release date : September 2019 (TIFF), August 5, 2020 (international

Seen on 3 February 2020 at Club 13 (Paris)

Mulder's Mark:

Keith Thomas makes here his first independent feature film, setting the plot of his story in the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn NYC. This film, which turns more into a psychotherapy film than a real horror film, will prove to be of dubious effectiveness when it is a horror film, although it is very well directed and very correctly shot.

Yaku, a young New York Jew who recently left his orthodox community, finds himself reluctantly accepting a "small job". In the case of "Shomer", which consists of providing a wake for a deceased member of the community, he does not expect to live the most complicated night of his life.

Demons and other evil beings have already been used for more than a few years in various films, but Thomas' good idea is to bring us to discover a completely different culture, that of demons in the Jewish culture, which is not easy since very few "demons" exist there, except for "little devils" which are not very bad. The introduction is very well set up, after a brief presentation of the main character, we very quickly find ourselves alone in front of our anguishes, it will unfortunately follow only a short and predictable succession of Jump scare and other badly exploited cliches.

We will always give credit to his honesty in the setting and atmosphere of Thomas, if the plot and its resolution seems too quickly conducted and in the end without much interest, it could have been quite different if the scenario had been as passionate as the objective of its director, the atmosphere is without doubt, Thomas masters his framework and proves it to us whether with the wide urban sequences or tighter shots and anxiety-provoking interior gloomy.

The Vigil does the job and Thomas comes out with honor, in my eyes the biggest flaw of the film will be its classification as "Horror-fright" which will have the problem of misleading the viewer and surely has the disappointment of expectations.

A first attempt to transform.

The Vigil
Written and Directed by Keith Thomas
Produced by Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, Adam Margules
Starring Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Fred Melamed, Lynn Cohen
Music by Michael Yezerski
Cinematography: Zach Kuperstein
Edited by Brett W. Bachman
Production company : Blumhouse Productions, Boulderlight Pictures, Angry Adam Productions
Release date : September 2019 (TIFF), August 5, 2020 (international

Seen on January 10 2021 (press screener)

Tibogla's Mark: