The Vigil Review

You’re home alone. It’s getting late, and you need to go to bed. As you start to get ready for bed, you become more and more aware of the quiet darkness surrounding you. You probably have plenty of lights on, but it’s as if the night air itself is suffocating your lamps alive. Even the brightest rooms have shadows, and everything is unnervingly still. It occurs to you that there could be anything hiding in your house, hiding in the dark. The darkness has always been there, but when you’re alone is when you really feel it, and suddenly you begin to see movements where there aren’t any – or are there? Was that just your mind, or did that shadow just twitch ever so slightly? You stare at it, as if by glaring it down you can force the shadow to reveal its secrets. It never does.

There’s a lot wrong with Keith Thomas’s The Vigil, but if there’s one thing I can give it credit for, it’s that it understands the way that darkness and fear join forces to twist the perceptions of those who face the night alone. The plot, following a Jewish American named Yakov Ronen (played by Dave Davis) with a troubled past who must partake in a traditional Jewish ritual and fulfill the role of a Shomer – someone who sits vigil over the body of one recently deceased to protect their soul. Unfortunately, this encounter brings Yakov face to face with a Mazzik, a terrifying demonic entity from the deeper annals of Jewish folklore.

The basic plot of The Vigil is a little bit too barebones, not doing quite enough to distinguish itself from others of its ilk – the big scare moments are often a bit too by-the-numbers for such a self-serious type of horror and the monster is used in a similar way as the villains from most other “monster as a metaphor” type stories. As soon as you realize what kind of past this man has and what the nature of this monster is, you understand the gist of how the story will go. But The Vigil is ultimately saved from becoming just another run-of-the-mill ghost story by its haunting images and densely saturated atmosphere.

Everything about The Vigil is mired in shadow and murk; the colors are dulled, and the shadows stain every surface, even the ones that are lit. The camera lingers on the smallest details, always seeming to ask the viewer if it can trust what its seeing. Is it just your eyes, or did the cloth covering the body twitch just then? Was that something moving in the shadow, or are you just looking for it, knowing what kind of film you’re watching? Everywhere there seem to be eyes; the placements of candles, the shape of various openings, all suggest the familiar aperture that we use for seeing every day. The camera shoots wide, showing you everything, but in that everything is also nothing but shadows and potential eyes. The threat is there, but despite everything, you can’t see it.

Of course, the religious overtones are far more than just set-dressing. The Mazzik is a uniquely terrifying entity, and one of the more obscure demons from Jewish folklore. Everywhere you look, the characters are shaped by their relationship with faith in some way or another. It’s easy enough to slap some aesthetics onto a horror film and say it’s about a religious struggle against a demon, but just beneath the surface, there seem to be some intense questions about religion and faith on display here. Yakov was once a devout Jew, but he has turned away from his community after a tragedy involving what appears to be a hate crime that affected his family. His relationship with his faith is up in the air, and it’s clear he’s plagued by doubt. I’m not and have never been Jewish, so I can’t truly speak on whether this portrayal is a good one, but at the very least, it feels like this is this filmmaking team’s unique relationship with the faith given cinematic form.

The Vigil doesn’t always go deep enough to really explore its themes. It almost says something poignant about grief and loss, but never really explores more than other, similar horror films have – the demon that follows you around being a metaphor for the baggage you carry is a storytelling device nearly as old as the horror genre itself. It starts to explore the nature of existing as a Jewish person in American culture and the way those identities can conflict, but never really says anything about it. In the midst of all I’ve said before, however, about its visuals and understanding of faith and the nature of darkness, a fascinating idea floats to the surface, one that I’ve been pondering. Religion is an incredibly personal subject, and it is no stranger to the dark spaces in our world; the mundane terrors we have to face every day. To face the darkness alone can sometimes be far too difficult and frightening to manage. But perhaps, faith is at its core an armor between us and that darkness; a way to come to terms with the fear of the unknown surrounding us, and face the dangers therein.