THE VIGIL (2019)

Early on, Yakov Ronen (the protagonist) has a flashback where he's walking down the street at night with a boy named Burech. They come across some thugs who grab Burech and make fun of him. Yakov doesn't have another flashback until the last part. After the thugs are done "playing" with Burech, they push him away to the street and he gets ran over because they didn't realize that a car was near. They flee while Yakov cries. In the present, Yakov realizes that he has to move on, which connects to the current conflict (he has to deal with evil spirits while looking after a recently deceased man). Wait a minute. I think writer/director Keith Thomas wanted viewers to be surprised at all this, but he didn't set the plot twist up well. No, scratch that. He set it up too well. He inadvertently gave us enough clues to figure things out in advance. Yakov already seemed frozen with fear in the 1st flashback, and by not showing how the situation unfolded, it was obvious that something tragic had happened. The present-day scenes that followed made it clear that Yakov was tormented by the past (hence why he was remembering that event). Therefore, this second flashback is simply clarifying details, but it's not really a revelation. It doesn't ruin the plot, though. UNORTHODOX (the great miniseries that was released several months ago) taught me how much traditional hairstyles truly mean to Orthodox Jews. Here, the thugs cut one of Burech's sidelocks. That was already very sad to watch, but killing him off immediately after without giving him and Yakov time to absorb the pain? Only 1 of these 2 bad things should've happened. It wouldn't have felt melodramatic and the development of Yakov as a character would've been the same either way.