STACK #194 Dec 2020

FILM FEATURE

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shooting. “This was her last film,” he laments of the actress who also starred as Mags in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire . On top of all the spooky coincidences were the mixed reactions from the local Hasidic community, some neighbours even calling the cops on the final shooting day, resulting in their permits being pulled early. “It was a scene involving me standing on the street and screaming very loudly. The neighbours complained with the result being our permit was rescinded,” explains Davis, who was raised in the Jewish faith – The Vigil actually shooting during Hanukkah. Admittedly, Davis himself spooked the cast and crew after he began talking to himself on the set. “Yakov has so many fears, he creates a terrifying environment for himself. I wanted to recreate that faithfully, so for six weeks – much to the chagrin of my girlfriend – I attempted to summon demons all around me by only using my mind. The problem is that it worked and I actually saw demons. They looked like terror in its most pure form. “I also managed to summon a wolf spider. It just appeared on the ceiling – the biggest spider I have ever seen and, on the very next page of the script, it read ‘a wolf spider climbs over Yakov’s foot’. After that, I started to creep myself out – and my girlfriend banned me from having the script in the bedroom or even looking at it after dark.”

For actor Dave Davis, the process of making TheVigil was almost as scary as the horror film itself. Words Gill Pringle

Y akov (Dave Davis), a former member of an Orthodox Jewish community, is recruited by his Rabbi to watch over a deceased man overnight with only his demented widow for company. While he’d rather be texting with a girl, Yakov instead finds himself battling a malevolent entity in writer-director Keith Thomas’s terrifying feature debut, The Vigil . Shot on location in Brooklyn, principal filming took place in a house where the

low budget indie lost four different grandparents over the course of a two- month shoot, including Davis’s own grandfather. “The film is dedicated to all our grandparents we lost,” he says. “My Grandfather lived in New York, so I was lucky to be the last family member to see him and to attend his funeral.”

Dave Davis and Lynn Cohen

No stranger to death, Davis was 17 when a childhood friend passed away and he saw his body in an open casket. “I remember reaching into the casket to put my hand on his chest to say goodbye

Impossible not to feel like their film was cursed, Davis was sad to learn that his co-star Lynn Cohen – who plays the widow Mrs. Litvak in The Vigil – passed away after

The woman had recently passed away in the house so it was very spooky. We definitely felt her presence

to my friend. I’ll never forget how inhuman he felt. It was very disturbing, so that was at the forefront of my mind when I repeated that on film. It’s not fun seeing a dead body for the first time, but it’s also a part of life. “Interestingly enough, the body is the least of Yakov’s problems in The Vigil , where his fears come from his own psyche.”

occupant had also recently died, echoing the script and putting everyone on edge. “The woman had recently passed away in the house so it was very spooky. We definitely felt her presence,” says Davis, 30, talking from his home in Los Angeles. Adding to the sense of foreboding is the bizarre fact that the cast and crew of this

• The Vigil is out on Dec 2

30 DECEMBER 2020

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