(Shudder
Original/streaming film. Director/screenwriter: Gabril Bier Gislason)
Review
Danish actress, Maja (Josephine Park), meets Jewish academic (Leah, played by Ellie Kendrick) in a bookstore, and they quickly fall in love. When Leah, who has strange seizures, returns to her mother’s home, Maja goes with her. Chana, Leah’s mother, is a strict practitioner of Jewish black magick. Furthermore, the serious older woman doesn’t seem to like Maja, driving her to figure out the changes in Leah’s personality, her relationship with her rigid mother, and the Kabbalah-related objects hidden around Chana’s house.
If you view director Gislason’s feature debut for what it comes off as—a barely R-rated made-for-television, initially fun and romantic drama with occasional PG-13 horror moments—it might be a good viewing choice for you. If you’re one of those sensitive souls who sincerely use the phrase “elevated horror” and doesn’t get the joke (all horror work has inherent subtext, it’s not meant to be worn as a fan-badge of arrogance and/or ignorance), ATTACHMENT could easily be your vaguely, occasionally horrific check-it-out flick as well.
If you’re an Old School/traditional horror fan looking for a well-edited film that effectively, continually builds up to a satisfying, suspenseful horror-flick ending, you might want to skip it. ATTACHMENT‘s first twenty or thirty minutes are promising, relatively fast-paced, a steady-build work. Then it hits a drawn-out, glacial-paced thirty or so minutes, where Maja, initially smart, becomes so love-dumb and gormless that she strains believability. By the time all is spoon-fed, er, revealed to her, it’s a moot point—experienced horror viewers will likely have sussed out the film’s lacking-in-suspense storyline and upcoming shots early on and, like me, just wanted the movie over with already.
On
paper, I see where ATTACHMENT might’ve worked as an hourlong
television/streaming horror show episode. It builds like an unedited novella
(one can almost see which scenes would be dramatic chapter endings), but as a
feature. . . Gabril Bier Gislason, his cast and crew are clearly able to put out part
of a good movie. It’s a shame that its snail-crawl middle-to-end section relies
on its lead (Maja) being excessively dumb, even for someone newly in love, and scenes
recycling (without building on) previously established plot points.
Standout actors include:
Sofie Gråbøl (THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, 2018) as Chana, Leah’s intense, black magick-practicing mother;
David Dencik (DEPARTMENT Q: THE ABSENT ONE, 2014) as Lev, a bookstore owner and
Ellie’s uncle.
If you don’t like gore, suspense, violence, good editing, or anything darker than weak milk chocolate in your movies, ATTACHMENT could easily be your cinematic kick for an hour and forty-five minutes. If you’re not, feel free to skip it.
