The Vigil

The Vigil (2020) — watch online on iFILM this tightly wound horror film directed by Keith Thomas, starring Dave Davis in a one-man pressure-cooker performance. Produced in the US, the film roots its scares firmly in Orthodox Jewish tradition and the mythology of the dybbuk.

Yakov has recently left his Hasidic community and is barely keeping it together when the local rabbi asks him to sit shomer — to watch over a recently deceased man through the night, reciting prayers and keeping vigil until morning. It pays. He agrees. The old house is quiet at first, and then it isn't. Something in the building seems to know Yakov's history better than he does.

Thomas built the film around a single confined space and a single actor carrying almost every frame. The Mazik — the entity at the story's centre — works not through jump scares but through suggestion: it attaches itself to unresolved guilt and will not let go until the host faces what he has been running from. For a horror film, it's unusually precise about what it's actually afraid of. Stream The Vigil online on iFILM.