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Post by novastar6 on Oct 16, 2021 22:50:44 GMT
A Jewish horror movie, already interested. I got the last copy at Walmart, thought it'd be interesting but probably not that great, but I actually loved it. SPOILERS, for once it's so nice to see a horror movie that doesn't end with everybody dead, or the main character being dragged backwards by an invisible force into a room that the door slams shut while they scream, or that all the events just start replaying all over again.
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Post by Vits on Oct 22, 2021 21:48:54 GMT
Don't be fooled by the title card that's shown at the beginning of THE VIGIL. It makes it look like a fantasy epic, but it's actually a horror movie with allegorical elements (the title card at the end seems more fitting). It's effective, but it doesn't reach its full potential, because it uses 1 too many jump scares. 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.
7/10 ------------------------------------- You can read comments of other movies in my blog. |
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Post by novastar6 on Oct 22, 2021 22:48:47 GMT
Don't be fooled by the title card that's shown at the beginning of THE VIGIL. It makes it look like a fantasy epic, but it's actually a horror movie with allegorical elements (the title card at the end seems more fitting). It's effective, but it doesn't reach its full potential, because it uses 1 too many jump scares. 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.
7/10 ------------------------------------- You can read comments of other movies in my blog.
I'm slow, from the old B&W pic, I couldn't figure out who it was supposed to be, I thought Yakov was the little kid and he was with his dad. I didn't put it together until the second flashback.
Now my thing, kind of like the remake of House on Haunted Hill, I'm sure everybody did this, you see those mummified dissected bodies in the glass cases in the basement and you just keep waiting for them to start moving, for them to get up and try to kill the guests, and they never do, and I never really thought about it until William Malone himself pointed it out, every time someone goes down there we look at them and wait for them to move, and they never do. And similar thing here, they keep showing the dead body covered with the sheet, and we're waiting for it to move, but what I'm really waiting for is Yakov gets up, does something, comes back, looks...and the body's turned around. I kept looking thinking 'head here, feet there, head here, feet there', expecting it would be reversed when he came back. That sounds like something that Scary Movie would do or some other parody, but that's what I kept waiting to see, lol.
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Post by forca84 on Oct 25, 2021 19:19:56 GMT
Doesn't seem like my cup of Tea... But interesting comments here. Thanks for posting.
I'm generally more into slashers.
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