Attachment: Final Girls Berlin Review

Attachment, directed by Katarzyna Babicz is a modern day take on the succubus myth. Maybe even that is a generous assessment. It is disjointed and disappointing.

Attachment sees Babicz plucking themes from Aronofsky and Cronenberg at will, but imbuing the story with little depth. It appeared more like an exercise in zombie make-up and horror soundtracks than anything of particular narrative interest.

Final Girls Berlin Film Festival showcases horror cinema that’s directed, written, or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers. We are committed to creating space for female voices and visions, whether monstrous, heroic or some messy combination of the two, in the horror genre. We’ve seen more than enough representations of women as beautified victims and constructions of male fantasies or anxieties, and are working towards the primacy of women as subjects and storytellers in horror.

The “final girl” horror trope refers to the last woman standing in a horror film, who manages to escape or defeat the film’s villain/monster (e.g. in ALIEN and HALLOWEEN). While “final girl” is an ambivalently feminist figure in film criticism, often desexualized and tainted with the male director’s moralization and punishment of other female characters’ behavior, the festival utilizes this figure as a starting point for carving out space for new and undiscovered positions of power for women in horror, not only in front of but also behind the camera.

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