The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Judaism is the religious practice of the Jewish people (the only religion that manages to belong to an ethnic group, although not all Jewish people are practitioners of Judaism). Judaism essentially covers the first half of The Bible (The Old Testament), which is an ethnographic history covering the creation of the universe, Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden, Moses leading the Jewish people from the yolk of slavery in Egypt to their chosen home in the desert (Israel), the Ten Commandments and so forth. There are many different branches of Judaism and the practice covers everything from morality and social law, diet, clothing, sexuality and belief in the coming of The Messiah.
There are not many genre films that can be considered to be about Judaism per se, although most films about The Afterlife, God, Angels and Heaven are sufficiently nebulous that they can be said to apply to both Judaism and Christianity.
Judaism does lend several aspects of its mythology that have proven popular on screens. One of these is the Ark of the Covenant (which contains the scrolls of the law given to Moses). Another figure is that of Lilith, supposedly Adam’s first wife, who is often incarnated as a demonic femme fatale.
From later rabbinic teaching comes the figure of The Golem, an artificial creature of clay that can be brought to life to protect the Jewish people, and the demonic spirit known as The Dybbuk.
A unique and original Polish film that throws out all the possession cliches and is instead about a man possessed by a Jewish dybbuk – the spirit of a girl killed during the Holocaust – on his wedding night
Classic silent film from the German Expressionist period in which a rabbi brings to life a creature made of clay (played by Paul Wegener), which then proceeds to go amok
From the Paz Brothers who previously made Jeruzalem, a new take on the legend of the golem that offers an interpretation of the idea very different to any previous film version
A New Zealand-made horror comedy. Oddly this is not, as the title might suggest, about a possessed sofa but a possessed recliner chair
The second of The Librarian tv movies featuring Noah Wyle as an Indiana Jones-modelled adventurer in search of mythical artifacts – here a map to King Solomon’s Mines
Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of the Biblical legend was mired in controversy. I can only applaud his decision to defy those who claim ownership of the story and set out to make an interesting film. Yet Noah remains an epic that never seems to quite fill the screen and a human drama that never quite comes to life
Undeniably reminiscent of the standout The Vigil, a horror film set around an Orthodox Jewish funeral home that creates great uncanny mood
Another title jumping on the fad for ouija board films we’ve had since Blumhouse’s Ouija series, this concerning an ouija board that has a malevolent spirit trapped inside it. Routine tension by the numbers – possessed people with glowing eyes are just not that scary
Based on the urban legend surrounding a dybbuk box that turned up on an EBay auction, although the film throws this out to conduct an utterly generic possession story. Despite the novelty of drawing on Judaic mythology, the film still trades in the same tired cliches as the Christian exorcism film
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s homage to the adventure films of the 1940s was a huge hit in its day, spawning several sequels and many imitators. The film is pure action and adventure, delivered with enormous charm and wit
A much more elevated version of an Omen-styled Biblical End Times film with Demi Moore worried if her child can save the world
Film set in a small 19th Century Orthodox Jewish village struggling to deal with the modern world, featuring Noah Taylor as a fool troubled by visions of The Devil
Scriptwriter David S. Goyer takes the director’s choice to make a possession film. The one distinction here is that Goyer draws from Jewish mythology, otherwise this feels like another canned teen horror film
Standout film set among the Orthodox Jewish community where a man sitting an all-night vigil with a corpse finds it possessed by a demonic force that starts toying with him