The Vigil (2019) Film4, written and directed by Keith Thomas.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-vigil?.none.none.popular||

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vigil_(2019_film)

The Vigil doesn’t refer to the siege and coming ground invasion of the Gaza strip but a more simpler world when all an apostate orthodox Jew in New York, Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis), had to worry about was his eternal soul being stolen by a Mazzik. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazzikin

The monster or Mazzik is eternal as all good monsters are. How did it end up in a dreary apartment in New York? Well, the monster comes via the suffering of the Holocaust and Buchenwald. A recurring nightmare of a Nazi guard urging a man to shoot an innocent girl in a forest. The Mazzik sneaks up and takes control of the broken man holding the pistol. It feeds on his suffering, but needs a fresh victim to continue with its unlife.

Yakov Ronen is that new victim and new blood. He has given up his Jewish faith, after feeling he betrayed his kid brother, who was knocked down and killed. Yakov lost his mind. Brooklyn is unforgiving. Rents are so high. He agrees to take on the job of Shomer for the night for a fee of $400. A Shomer says prayers over the dead body of a Jew that has died and keeps him or her safe from malevolent spirits.

He meets Rubin Litvak’s (Ronald Cohen with Dun Laskey as young Rubin) widow. Mrs Litvak apparently has Alzheimer’s but she tells Yakov to flee for his life as the Shomer hired before him fled. But Yakov needs that money for rent.

We also know that the dead will rise in the haunted house. It’s just a matter of timing and notching up the horror, while feeding the viewer backstory. A dilemma facing film-makers is whether to keep the monster in shadows and hidden. Nosferatu is one of the earliest successful examples of showing the monster’s face. Patchy bouffant and orange-haired Trump the least successful, but far more scary and evil.   

The Mazzik, when seen close up, with its sausage fingers, isn’t convincing. Better here to have kept it in shadow.

The broken hero Yakov, like the protagonist in any fairy story, must strike immediately. He’ll only get one chance to kill the witch, the wizard, the Mazzik. Thereafter he’ll be in its power. The Vigil is a morality play. Do the right thing. That way lies salvation. I wish the world we live in was that simplistic. Worth watching.