At the beginning of the movie, we are told that for thousands of years, a custom has been going
on in Judaism which is called Vigil. When a member of the Jewish family dies, a guard,
who is called Shomer, guards the corpse until the funeral takes place. He recites the religious
mantra to save the deceased from the invisible evil forces untill he gets peace. This guard
is often a family member or a close friend, but when there is no close relative to Vigil,
there are Shomers who do this work for money. The film opens with an unidentified boy forced
by a man in a black Nazi uniform to shoot a young woman in a forest,
as a strange figure approaches them in the background. The film then cuts to Yakov Ronen,
who takes some medicine standing in the washroom because he is struggling to deal
with an unspecified traumatic event in his past. Then he comes out where we see some
people who are having a meeting. These people are struggling to settle in the modern secular world
by leaving their Orthodox Jewish community. They have made a self-help organization of their own.
Then Lane, the leader of that group, asks Ronen about his job interview,
on which he tells that he did not get that job. Lane asks him how will he pay the rent
now? which Ronen is worried about, but everyone comforts him. We then see that Ronen is shy to
talk to a group member named Sarah. He also gets a little nervous seeing his cousin Reb Shulem,
standing outside the window. Sarah saves her number on his phone and leaves asking to meet
him tomorrow. After this, when Lane learns of Shulem's arrival, he goes downstairs and warns
him not to harass his group members. Shulem tells him that he just has to talk to Ronen,
and then Lane leaves from there. Shulem offers Ronen a job as a Shomer, but he refuses it saying
that he has left the community. However, Shulem tells him that his hired Shomer has
run away and he has experience in this work, so he needs him and offers him 200 dollars.
Now because Ronen needed money, he agrees to do this work for 500 dollars. When asked by Ronen,
Shulem tells him that his community member Rubin Litvak, who was the only Holocaust survivor of his
family has died. After coming here, he married again, but his children are not here and his
wife has Alzheimer, due to which she cannot do this work. Shulem also tells him that the
Shomer whom he had arranged ran away in fear and he would have to do vigil for 5 hours. Then they
go to Mr. Litvak's house where Mrs. Litvak on seeing Ronen says that this Shomer is not right,
so he has to leave from here. But when Mrs. Litvak goes upstairs to sleep, Shulem leaves Ronen there.
The body is kept there in the lounge itself and Ronen sits there and starts listening to the songs
on his phone. After some time, he starts hearing banging noises from the floor above, so he stops
listening to songs and starts reading prayers. He sees that there is some movement in the corpse but
he feels that he is hallucinating. Just then he hears something from behind and sees a shadowy
figure in the house's dining room standing, and he think she is Mrs. Litvak, but when he
turns on the flash of his phone, there is no one there. He then finds a photo of Mister Litvak and
his family with a similar shadowy figure behind them. Then after a while, Ronen falls asleep and
has a dream in which he is walking on the road at night with his younger brother. On the way,
they encounter some people who push him and start harassing his brother. Suddenly he wakes
up from sleep and gets a text message, but when he takes out his phone, his hand starts hurting.
He sees that this is Sarah's message and then he starts chatting with her. During this,
he starts hearing some voices from above, but he ignores them.
Then a lamp starts flickering, after which all the lights of the house start flickering. Now
Ronen gets very frustrated with this and goes to check the lamp. But the bulb explodes and
the house becomes dark. He then receives a video on his phone by an unknown number.
The video shows Mrs. Litvak approaching him and touching his face while he is asleep,
and then the video file vanishes from his phone a few seconds later. Now before he could understand
anything, he hears a sound and sees a leg that breaks the nail of its thumb, and as soon as
Ronen turns on the light, those feet go ahead and disappear. Ronen now panics and calls his doctor,
but the call goes to voicemail. He tells him that he is seeing and hearing things and asks him to
call back. After this, when he goes to drink water, he again hears sounds from above and
sees that instead of water in the glass, there is some black liquid, and then a bunch of hair comes
out of his mouth, which starts sliding on the ground. He is still watching it when Mrs. Litvak
comes there and says that they are not nightmares. They are memories but not his. She asks him why he
has come here? to which he tells her that he is a Shomer and has come here to protect her husband.
Mrs. Litvak tells him that she drove them away and they thought it was their choice. This
place is not for children. It was a bunker in the wilderness, a place that you go to,
but never return from. Then she says that her husband was broken by memories,
the kind of memories he just saw. Then she picks up a piece of glass and clenches
it in her fist due to which she starts bleeding. and then she leaves from there.
Ronen hears someone's voice and when he follows that voice to the basement,
he sees that there is a video recording of Mister Litvak and his wife playing on TV. In
the recording, Mister Litvak explains that he was haunted by a Mazzik, a malevolent spirit,
since his time in Buchenwald, and that it latches onto a "broken person" and that its
true face must be burned by dawn on the first night of its appearance to banish it. But if
that person is not able to do this, then that demon will hunt someone else after his death.
He then notices that Mrs. Latvik is trying to say something in the video, and when he goes near
to listen to her, she says that he is behind him. Now hearing this, Ronen gets terrified,
and when he looks back, The Mazzik appears right behind him. He flees from the basement and during
this, his leg gets injured. He then gets a call apparently from his physician Dr. Kohlberg. He
tells him he is seeing and hearing things, on which the doctor asks who is he seeing? Ronen
says he doesn't know, but the man and his wife who were living here were obsessed with demons,
something called Mazzik. The doctor asks him did he see the demon too? To which he tells that he
had seen the shadow. The doctor explains to him that it is because of the accident that
happened to his brother that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress and fear. He asks
him to close his eyes and think about that shadow and describe to him. Ronen is unable to describe
anything and the doctor asks if its head was turned back. Ronen then sees some movement in
the corpse, and when he goes to check it, he sees that he is getting another call from Dr. Kohlberg,
who tells him he just got his message and apologizes for getting late to call him back.
On hearing this, Ronen gets very scared, and when he switches to the first call, his dead
brother asks him "Why did he let him die?" Just then he sees Mrs. Litvak going up the stairs and
suddenly from behind Mrs. Litvak asks him for tea. She tells him that he will not let him go
from here. Ronen asks her who will not let him go? To which she says that mazzik is playing with him.
it wants his pain and will make him see terrible things. Then she says that even if he runs away,
mazzik will make him crawl right back. Ronen asks her to leave there with him, but when
she does not agree, he says that he is going to Shulem and then they will come back to get her.
He then comes out of the house, but on the way, his hand starts hurting very badly. After this,
the bone of his leg also gets cracked and he starts trying to crawl forward,
But he can't even move and then is confronted by the Mazzik. Ronen hastily returns to the house
and falls down the steps after being startled by the Mazzik appearing in front of the door.
A flashback then reveals that Ronen's brother was killed in a car accident after escaping from
the men who were tormenting him, and Ronen has felt guilty about his death ever since.
Now when he regains consciousness, he finds himself inside the house and starts crying
for not being able to save his brother's life. He then sees that Mr. Latvik's body
is missing from there. He talks to Sarah on FaceTime and tells her that there is
something evil in this house. It was following Mr litvak and then it was feeding off of him.
He thinks it wants him now and it won't let him leave. Sarah tells him that he
needs to go upstairs And now there is no use fighting him. Ronen is shocked
to hear this and then she says that he just saw her brother dying and did not help him,
and suddenly Mazzik takes her away. Then he sees that Mr. Litvak's body comes back there and gets
up. He asks him in his brother's voice why he let him die. Ronen goes to him and says that he
was very scared and starts apologizing to him. But then he sees that there is only a shroud in
his hand. He then goes to Mrs. Litvak, who gives him some items and says that they will help him.
She then tells that in 1919, Her Grandfather Saw his parents murdered in kiev. Neighbors
saved him out, and since then, he davened with tallis and tefillin every day. Ronen
ties the tefillin to his arm which is a set of small black leather boxes with leather
straps containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah.
He then takes a candle and goes back where he confronts the Mazzik, And like him, he is also
holding a candle in his hand. Then he turns his head and shapeshifts its true face to look like
Ronen's. Ronen gets scared seeing this and after initially hesitating, sets its true face on fire,
and then banishes it, and then it begins to make Litvak's body contort loudly.
He then sees Mister Litvak's body shaking inside the shroud, and he sits near him and
starts reading prayers. A flashback then reveals that mister Litvak was the boy forced to shoot
the young woman in the opening scene. The pain Litvak felt after the shooting caused the Mazzik
to latch on to him. Ronen orders Mazzik to leave Litvak's body while reading prayers,
and finally, after some time Mazzik leaves him. On the next morning, the mortuary men
arrive to collect Mister Litvak's body, And we see that Ronan does not take his medicine, which
means his trauma and fear were also over. Shulem asks Ronen to attend morning prayers with him,
but Ronen declines his offer, saying "not today". As he leaves the house, a dark figure is seen
following him out of the house and heading down the street behind him, and the movie ends here.
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