Attachment is the very specific nightmare of falling in love on a charming, slightly chaotic day… and waking up in a horror movie where your biggest enemy might be your girlfriend’s mom, or a demon, or both working a joint venture. Gabriel Bier Gislason’s debut is a romantic horror that takes sapphic meet-cute energy, crashes it into Jewish folk horror, and then quietly asks: “So how much would you actually endure for love? Follow-up question: what about dybbuks?”
It’s tender, funny, unsettling, and so beautifully odd that it feels less like a film and more like a deeply cursed love story someone might whisper to you at 3 a.m. in a hostel kitchen.
Maja: Disaster Lesbian with a Stage Background
Maja, played by Josephine Park, is a washed-up actress in Denmark whose glory days are behind her. She’s doing children’s gigs in an elf costume, which is already emotionally violent, and you can tell she’s living on leftover adrenaline and denial. She stumbles into Leah at a library, and within about ten minutes they’re having one of those whirlwind relationships that is either the start of something incredible or the opening montage of a tragic story. In this case, it’s both.
Maja is messy in a very human way. She’s impulsive, insecure, romantic to the point of self-destruction, and repeatedly makes the kind of decisions that scream, “I’ve never dated a Jew from Golders Green before, but how hard can it be?” Her trajectory from flaky actress to emergency caretaker to accidental demon-fighter is surprisingly believable, which says a lot about how bad queer dating can get.
Leah: Girl, Interrupted (By Demons and Family)
Ellie Kendrick’s Leah is a Jewish academic from London, bright and serious and clearly carrying around more weight than she lets on. She and Maja click hard and fast: it’s sweet, vulnerable, and just awkward enough to feel real rather than Instagram-filtered romance.
Then Leah has a seizure out of nowhere, smashing the brakes on the dream. Whatever is wrong with her is not just medical; the film makes that clear early on without turning her into a walking horror device. She’s not just “the possessed girlfriend”; she’s a woman stuck between love, illness, and a mother with enough spiritual anxiety to power an entire synagogue’s worth of panic.
Leah’s gentleness and grounded charm make the stakes feel painfully high. She’s not a horror archetype, she’s someone you’d fully swipe right on—right up until you meet the family and the folklore.
Chana: The Jewish Mother to End All Jewish Mothers
Sofie Gråbøl’s Chana could have been a cliché—the overbearing, religious, judgmental Jewish mom—but Attachment gives her something richer and scarier. She’s absolutely intense, controlling, and suspicious of Maja. She also genuinely loves her daughter and is clearly terrified in a way that goes beyond normal parental neurosis.
Chana’s the kind of woman who will smile politely at you in the kitchen, then ward off evil spirits behind your back, then possibly yell at you in Yiddish about the mezuzah. She’s a walking boundary issue with a kippah-adjacent vibe and a secret life steeped in Jewish mysticism. The fun part is that for a solid portion of the film you’re not sure if she’s the problem… or the only thing standing between Leah and something much, much worse.
Maja, being a well-meaning gentile with approximately zero exposure to this world, misreads everything in the most relatable way possible. “My girlfriend’s mom hates me” is a universal queer experience; “My girlfriend’s mom might also be hiding a dybbuk situation” is more niche, but the emotional trajectory is similar.
Horror in Golders Green
One of the movie’s biggest strengths is its setting: a tight-knit London Jewish community, complete with kosher shops, Hebrew texts, and neighbors who absolutely notice everything. Instead of the usual haunted mansion in the woods, we get horror in a cramped flat and a very normal-looking neighborhood where the supernatural lurks among herbal remedies and religious ritual.
The film is steeped in Jewish folklore without ever feeling like it’s giving you a lecture. There are whispers of dybbuks, protective amulets, and spiritual danger, but it’s presented in the casual, lived-in way religious people talk about things: half joke, half deadly serious. Maja walks into this world like someone who thought she was going to meet the in-laws and instead stumbled into a Kabbalah-infused escape room.
Romance First, Possession Second
What sets Attachment apart from a lot of “romantic horror” is that it doesn’t treat the relationship like a disposable plot device. Maja and Leah’s connection is the heart of the film; the possession, folklore, and terror all orbit around it. Their intimacy feels messy and real: morning afters, small arguments, cultural misunderstandings, all of it.
When things begin to go wrong—Leah’s health, Chana’s controlling behavior, weird noises behind doors—it doesn’t feel like a genre switch so much as escalation. Love doesn’t stop being love just because the lights start flickering and the hallways get haunted. It just gets more complicated and several degrees less safe.
The horror works precisely because the romance is so convincing. When Maja digs deeper into what’s happening to Leah, we buy that she’s doing it out of love, not because the script told her to be “the hero.” She’s not equipped for this, she’s scared, and she absolutely makes mistakes—but she stays. That commitment is touching and also vaguely concerning.
Jumpscares with a Side of Guilt
The film doesn’t drown itself in jump scares, but when it decides to get under your skin, it goes for atmosphere, emotional tension, and the kind of creeping dread that feels suspiciously like a religious warning. Doors creak, figures appear where they shouldn’t, strange rituals happen in the background. Some of the scares are classic, some are rooted in the uncanny feeling of being the outsider in someone else’s culture, watching things you don’t fully understand.
There’s also an undercurrent of guilt and obligation running through everything. Family guilt, romantic guilt, religious guilt—it’s all here, and it all feeds the horror in a way that’s darkly funny if you’ve ever had a parent sigh theatrically and say, “After everything I’ve done for you…” Now imagine that energy plus cursed texts and supernatural entities. Sleep tight.
Dybbuks and Daddy Issues
Without spoiling every twist, it’s fair to say that Gislason uses Jewish folklore not just as spooky seasoning but as a way to explore trauma and inheritance. There are secrets buried in Leah’s family that go beyond “we’re a bit intense.” The past refuses to stay quiet; it manifests in spiritual and emotional hauntings.
Lev, played by David Dencik, adds another layer to the mix—part spiritual guide, part weirdo next-door presence, part mystery in his own right. He helps flesh out the world of rituals and beliefs that Chana inhabits, and he’s a reminder that spirituality can be gentle, strange, and flawed all at once.
The dybbuk element—an invading spirit that attaches to a person—is an almost too-perfect metaphor for inherited pain, for issues that cling to you whether you want them or not. The film mines this without becoming heavy-handed. It lets the possession just be terrifying on its own terms while also whispering: “By the way, families do this too.”
Funny, Awkward, and Deeply Unsettling
For all its creeping dread, Attachment has a sly sense of humor. There are awkward family dinners, painfully relatable culture-clash moments, and the kind of quiet, sideways jokes that come out when people are terrified but also still need to function. It never turns into a comedy, but it recognizes that life is ridiculous even when it’s awful—and honestly, especially then.
Maja’s outsider perspective gives us plenty of darkly funny beats: her attempts to impress Chana, her misreading of religious items, her bland Scandinavian face reacting to full-force Jewish mother energy. The film seems keenly aware that “gentile girlfriend walks into deeply religious Jewish family drama” is inherently a bit funny—even before you add demons.
Final Verdict: Love Is a Many-Splendored, Occasionally Possessed Thing
Attachment is a romantic horror that actually takes both halves of that equation seriously. It’s a love story first, a possession story second, and a meditation on faith, family, and the weight of inherited fears wrapped around both.
If you’re looking for buckets of gore and nonstop scares, this might feel too intimate and character-driven. But if you want:
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a queer romance that feels real and emotionally invested
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Jewish folk horror that isn’t just exotic window dressing
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a terrifying (and slightly hilarious) portrait of The Girlfriend’s Mom From Another Dimension
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and a slow-burn dread that lingers like spiritual heartburn
…then Attachment is absolutely worth your time.
Just remember: before you follow your new crush home to another country, maybe ask a few extra questions. Like, “How’s your relationship with your mother?” And, if you’re really cautious: “Any chance your family is on a first-name basis with any malevolent spirits I should know about?”
