Film Review: The Vigil contemplates on the unbearable burden of letting go
To live with a past where grief has made a home in is hell on its own but to carry it to the grave is much, much worse. The Vigil, from the looks of it, is a formulaic supernatural flick fuelled by the age-old cliché that plays up the sinister in mortality—at times it does with its scattered jump-scares and physical effects—but it is not. At least it doesn’t have to be.
Teetering between thematic elements with admirable agility, Keith Thomas forbears genre tropes with his juxtaposition of anti-Semitic agony with ancient Jewish lore and demonology. The director finds his way in in the religious ritual of “shemira”, a practice where an appointed guardian would watch over the body of the deceased until the time of burial.
Here’s where Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis) comes in. Down on his luck and strapped for cash, he half-heartedly agrees to take on the responsibility of an overnight “shomer” or watchman after haggling for an extra couple of hundred bucks from his desperate, former rabbi Reb Shulem (Menashe Lustig). What transpires, as he would soon learn, is decidedly more than he has bargained for.
Set in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood, The Vigil sets the tone from the outset as it launches into a conversation on acculturation and the sense of belonging, or the lack thereof. The slow-booming horror opens with what appears to be a support group get-together for those who have abandoned the insular community for whatever reason it may be.
“We’re all just learning the rules,” says Sarah (Malky Goldman) as she untangles herself from a less-than-graceful hug with the blundering Ronen. There, the young Hasids exchange stories of life on the outside that include a recollection of an unpleasant encounter with an unnamed man who had made a pass at one of the female group members.
What should register as an act of sexual harassment that warrants a stern addressing is a novel concept to the group, a learning experience—a dangerous one at that as it could well engender a chain reaction stemming from the normalisation of such behaviour. It is particularly distressing as engaging in it would only subject them and the others to even more malice and prejudice.
The Vigil is indeed more than it lets on. It is suffused with nuance and accorded with a topical depth that turns the typical haunted house tale on its head. The dark clouds that hang over each frame, the ominous composition and the very design of the plot implore one to scratch a little further beneath the surface, which in time will bring to light the truth about a man ravaged by his past, damned to relive the albatross of someone else’s making, even in death.
It sees the series of disturbances that ensues throughout the night, the conjecture of spirits stuck between the worlds, unable to move on, that we know all too well, from a new perspective. And as he settles in the worn-out recliner, the holy book in his hands and upbeat music that can’t seem to drown out the eerie rackets in his ears, Ronen too is forced to confront his trauma and face his own demons.
The Vigil is playing in select theatres now.
