A quintessential low-budget supernatural horror, The Vigil mines Jewish folklore and rituals to create an effective sub-genre experience.

| May 1, 2021

This is a really damn good horror film made on a tight budget with almost one location only, and it never drags. They find really exciting ways to use this location to their advantage.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 30, 2021

They accomplish so much here with what is clearly a low budget and basically one location. It's terrifying.

| Mar 10, 2021

There is a touching human dimension to this tale that brought tears to my eyes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 28, 2021

Cannily filters its suspense through the prism of personal-and inherited-Jewish trauma.

| Feb 27, 2021

The Vigil is a sophisticated and scary film, smartly executed.

| Feb 26, 2021

An intriguing stab at modern Hasidic horror (we smell a burgeoning subgenre).

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 26, 2021

This sort of paint-by-numbers horror narrative barely scratches the surface of the heavy issues it alludes to.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 26, 2021

It is smart enough, scary enough and unique enough to be worth a watch both for horror fans and for people who want to see more Jewish culture represented on the screen.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 26, 2021

It dares to look forward, finding a future for Yakov that merges his two identities - religious and secular - and suggests a path back into the light.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 25, 2021

Keith Thomas's slim but effective "The Vigil" milks terror from a minimalistic setup, relying on the shapes we make out with squinted eyes in the shadows.

| Feb 25, 2021

No split pea soup spews forth, yet Keith Thomas' demonic Jewish horror freak-out summons the spectre of "The Exorcist" and its catastrophic jump scares.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 25, 2021

Keith Thomas's film hums with uncanny dread, milking the close juxtaposition of living and dead for all its worth.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 21, 2021

This excellent first feature from novelist turned writer-director Keith Thomas is a nifty, textured horror (mostly), thriftily set in one creepy house.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2020

An interesting little movie that makes the most of genuinely small resources and still has an air of dread about it...

| Aug 11, 2020

The Orthodox Jewish world has been the backdrop to some fine dramas, from Disobedience to Unorthodox, but the first-time director Keith Thomas proves here that it's a splendidly atmospheric setting for horror.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2020

There is an eerie creepiness about The Vigil which is both terrifying and impressive in its treatment of folklore and old superstition. Enlightening and genuinely engaging.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2020

view[ing] Jewish history and identity through the prism of genre, The Vigil dramatises the processes by which myth and memory sustain trauma down the generations

| Jul 31, 2020

Invoking the Holocaust as genre-film prop is dicey territory, something the first X-Men film barely got away with. The Vigil pulls it off...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 30, 2020

Featuring strong performances and excellent effects work, The Vigil is a genuinely creepy debut which explores the ways in which our psychological demons can get their claws into our entire lives.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 28, 2020