As the film gears up for its select theatrical and digital debut, IFC Midnight has shared an exclusive clip from debuting writer/director Keith Thomas’ horror-thriller The Vigil teasing the supernatural chiller steeped in ancient Jewish lore and demonology. The clip can be viewed in the player below!
RELATED: Exclusive The Sinners Clip From Courtney Paige’s Debut Thriller Feature
The Vigil is a supernatural horror film set over the course of a single evening in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood. Low on funds and having recently left his insular religious community, Yakov reluctantly accepts an offer from his former rabbi and confidante to take on the responsibility of an overnight “shomer,” fulfilling the Jewish practice of watching over the body of a deceased community member. Shortly after arriving at the recently departed’s dilapidated house to sit the vigil, Yakov begins to realize that something is very, very wrong.
The cast for the film includes Dave Davis (The Big Short, The Walking Dead), Malky Goldman (Unorthodox, God of Vengeance), Menashe Lustig (Menashe) and Lynn Cohen (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Affair).
“This sequence comes at a pivotal moment in the film, the sort of horror movie “turning point” when our main character, Yakov, realizes that the house is no longer safe to be inside,” Thomas wrote in a statement to ComingSoon.net. “And while he’s desperate to get Mrs. Litvak to join him in leaving this doomed place, she has lived there long enough to know there is no easy escape…Both Lynn Cohen and Dave Davis turn in great, tense performances in this scene, and I especially love the way Lynn breaks into that sinister and yet empathetic smile.”
RELATED: Exclusive The Arbors Trailer Promises a Creepy Crawly Nightmare
The Vigil, which is produced by Adam and Raphael Margules and J.D. Lifshitz and executive produced by Daniel Finkelman, is set to hit select theaters, digital platforms and VOD on Friday, February 26.
