The Vigil

Textbook religious horror - a crisis of faith, external threat as internal conflict manifest, an exorcism of a kind - it just happens the textbook is the Talmud. To its credit, the fidelity to the Orthodox Jewish setting and themes appears completely on point, the idea of shemira - with a dead body always in the room - is wonderfully unsettling, and the sound design is excellent (a must for any decent horror). It's too bad it takes far too long to get going.

It has a few nice jump scares, nothing much.

An interesting enough a concept and though it avoids many pitfalls is ultimately a little too lo-fi to capture any level of suspense. It's a fine enough of a story but it was never fully actualized in this film.

I wish they'd realize cliches aren't scary. There are a gazillion horror movies where the monster is a metaphor for guilt, it always effectively disarms the thing of any mystery or genuine fright, and it's especially cheesy when the script is Jewish-themed (not the first of those I've seen either, and after reading an interview I can confirm the director has no grasp of his Judaic sources or meanings of Hebrew words). Whatever few decent ideas this had are smothered with off-the-shelf scares.

I had high hopes for this one after just scarcely reading about it but was quite disappointed by it unfortunately.

Shomer diye 1 meslek varmış. Kardeşini kaybeden sorunlu 1 genç, 1 haham tarafından shomerlik yapmasını ister. Gittiği ev perili çıkar. Bazı sahnelerde gerildim. Yalan söylemeyim. Gerilim dozu iyi ayarlanmış. Tek mekanda tek gecede geçiyor. Filmin sonunda, shomer başarılı. Şommeeeeeerrr Şooooommmeeeer

There exists no reliable subtitle file for this movie online, therefore I have no idea what was said in Yiddish or Hebrew. That puts this behind the 8-ball and almost renders the first 15 minutes unwatchable. The next 75 minutes are at least somewhat interesting, and probably deserved better than I gave it after the start. There are certainly elements here that are done well, and even though there's a reliance on jump-scares, I'd put this in a category slightly above a lot of its contemporaries.

Just absolutely boring

bad movie