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The Vigil review – malevolent dybbuk seeks new host scarily

This horror yarn has an authentically Jewish setting and an expressive central performance from Dave Davis, guarding a corpse from evil

Jewishness – especially its historical traumas – has flowed freely into the DNA of horror, from the German expressionists to Roman Polanski and William Friedkin, even Darren Aronofsky. But there have been relatively few culturally specific Jewish horror films, and this is where Blumhouse Productions, with its eye for a canny hook, comes in. The Vigil, by debut writer-director Keith Thomas, doesn’t examine rising antisemitism, so it doesn’t have the same contemporary punch as Get Out had regarding Black Lives Matter, or The Invisible Man for #MeToo. But, set mostly in one house in the Orthodox community of Boro Park, Brooklyn, with reams of Yiddish dialogue, it is all the same an authentically Jewish and reasonably competent chiller.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/39ExugQ
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