Judaism and horror in film

those not-so-rare occasions when religion and horror cinema intersect, Judaism is seldom part of the picture. Phantoms, demons and assorted other entities that go bump in the night are frequently the domain of the Christian (especially Catholic) or pagan realms, but only rarely do films on such macabre topics venture into Jewish territory. Jewish director and screenwriter Keith Thomas — whose home is Colorado’s Front Range — aims to change that with his soon-to-be-released film, “The Vigil,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, to glowing reviews, and was included this year in the Denver Jewish Film Festival. As director and writer, Thomas has crafted a thoughtful and relentlessly eerie story that simultaneously draws upon psychological and supernatural elements in the Jewish […]