When I began watching Gabriel Bier Gislason’s debut horror film Attachment, I was excited by what I saw unfolding. Horror films don’t often center around the idea of romance, and even fewer include a queer relationship at the center of the story. Attachment offers viewers both and that is definitely something to celebrate. Unfortunately, the actual horror part of the story and its resolution fail to live up to the setup and undo much of the interest and tension created from the collision of romance and religion.

The romance focuses on Maja (Josephine Park), a Danish actor living on the previous success of one role, and Leah (Ellie Kendrick), a Jewish scholar from England with Danish ancestors who visits the country for the first time. The couple meets with instant attraction and have what at first appears to be a one-night stand before Leah returns to London. Leah decides at the last moment to stay, a choice that begins a chain of events that ends with Maja and Leah going to London and staying in Leah’s flat. Connected to the same building is Leah’s mother, Chana, whose ultraconservative Jewish practices seem at first possibly homophobic but soon turn to a much darker potential reason. Only Lev, Leah’s uncle, has the answers as to what might truly be happening and Maja’s conversations with him spur the horror aspect of the film into being.

The actors portraying the main characters are all impressive. Park gives Maja the perfect combination of confusion, concern and suspicion as events progress. As the Jewish mother Chana, Sofie Gråbøl’s facial expressions express anger, confusion, sadness and love with the tiniest changes that are lovely to watch. David Dencik is wonderful as Lev, adding gravitas and sincerity to what could otherwise have been merely an expositional role. The best performance of all comes from Kendrick. Her role demands someone who can fulfill many roles—woman in love, woman with potential physical and mental issues, dangerous killer, monster—and Kendrick nails them all. She shifts from one aspect to another with ease, making the transitions all appear natural and obvious until suddenly she has gone too far and the horror is revealed.

As should be clear, this film gets much of what it is trying to do correct. But what it fails to do is actually be a horror movie. When the horror arrives, the plot uses a traditional Jewish variation of the idea of possession. That choice equates into visuals that are far less splashy than one normally gets with the Christian demonic variety, and that change could have been interesting. The best horror films rely on tension and discomfort more than CGI, after all. It is here, with the idea of tension, that Attachment falls short.

The film attempts to create the question as to whether the supernatural fears Chana has about her daughter are real or misguided beliefs—but the ultimate answer gets telegraphed so early that question never truly exists in the audience’s mind. The same is true about the finale, where a specific sacrifice is brought up as a requirement to “save” the situation. The ultimate choice of that sacrifice is instantly obvious, once again defeating the tension that the film wants us to have.

Attachment offers a wonderful beginning, showing us a relationship that feels honest and genuine, creating characters that I wanted to follow and setting up what could have been a fascinating tale about whether the demons of our beliefs have any reality or not. In the process of laying out the tale, however, the characters and debates get swallowed by a plot that deflates the premise into a story where the real horror lies in how little one cares about those same genuine characters by the end.

5 out of 10