Just in time for Halloween, I have a few movies to recommend that have Judaism at their core. If you haven’t been paying much attention to horror movies lately, you may think that they are still primarily inhabited by slashers such as Michael Myers (Halloween), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th) or Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street). While those characters are still beloved in the slasher subgenre, horror has expanded considerably in the last decade, as a new generation of filmmakers have come into the fold.
In 2017, Jordan Peele shook the foundations of the movie industry with the runaway hit Get Out, a horror flick infused with the Black experience in America. Suddenly, you didn’t have to make movies just about maniacs with knives or killer clowns—you could make them about what you see when you look at the world around you. Contemporary filmmakers from traditionally marginalized groups have since sought to filter their experiences through the horror lens.
Yet, if you go back far enough, you realize that this is not a new trend so much as a circling back. Horror movies, which include numerous subgenres, have reflected the times they were made in since the art form was first invented. I love horror movies because few other genres can cut so deeply and directly into the human psyche.
Five Jewish Horror Movies
The following five picks are horror movies that have some aspect of Jewish history or Jewish religion at their core. These films are not only appropriate for this spooky time of year, they have something to say as well.
Attachment (Directed by Gabriel Bier Gislason, 2022)
For fans of the recent Netflix smash Nobody Wants This comes this bit of a horror movie companion piece (in terms of a Jewish-non-Jewish mixed relationship), told through a queer lens. Maja (Josephine Park) meets Leah (Ellie Kendrick) and it is love at first sight. Leah grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in London and is studying abroad in Denmark. It isn’t long before Leah’s mother begins making incessant calls for her to come back to London, and Leah starts acting strangely. After a terrifying seizure, she is forced to return home, bringing Maja along with her. We learn that Leah’s mother may not be what she appears and might have a very good reason for being so protective of Leah. Pulling lore from the Kabbalah, Attachment is an eerie, slow-burning bit of psychological horror that calls to mind films like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion.
Available for rent on Amazon, or stream it on Shudder
Blood Relatives (Directed by Noah Segan, 2022)
As a Jew who was born in Texas, I was tickled to watch a horror-comedy about a Yiddish vampire cruising the back roads of my birth state, with a daughter he only recently learned of in tow. Noah Segan stars as Francis, the 115-year-old vampire (and Holocaust survivor) who is trapped in the body of a 35-year-old. Blood Relatives plays with a funny subtext about what it can be like to be a Jew traipsing across red-state America. Segan, in his feature-length directorial debut, finds plenty of overlap and parallels between Francis’s historical experience as a Jew and his experience as a vampire—each that of a wandering loner, forever on the move, in search of a home to finally settle down in. With a score that takes full advantage of the more sinister-sounding aspects of Klezmer, and a script full of Yiddish slang, Blood Relatives is a fun movie to watch with a bowl of Halloween candy.
Available for rent on Amazon, or stream it on Shudder
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Demon (Directed by Marcin Wrona, 2015)
One of a number of Jewish horror movies to bring in the lore of the dybbuk, Demon is an especially haunting one set in Poland. Itay Tiran plays Piotr, a Polish man who has lived in England for many years returning to his homeland to get married. During the ceremony, dark forces are conjured and threaten to overtake not only the wedding proceedings but Piotr himself. Calling to mind classics such as The Shining, the film is about the great effort a people must put into burying the past and washing their hands of it, and how the past will often find a way to come back to settle unfinished business.
Available for rent on Amazon, or stream it on Kanopy
The Golem: How He Came into the World (Directed by Paul Wegener & Carl Boese, 1920)
When I said that Jewish horror movies have been around a long time, this is the film I had in mind. This was German director Paul Wegener’s do-over attempt at salvaging a now-lost 1915 film about the titular creature of Jewish folklore, who in medieval Prague is awakened by a Rabbi to protect the Jewish people there from expulsion and violence. Wegener completed and released the remake in the aftermath of a string of pogroms—and not long before Hitler’s rise to power. Watching the film now can feel overwhelming, prophetic and rife with a sense of foreboding. Yet one can also simply marvel at the film itself. The visuals and fascinating use of post-production coloring bring an almost psychedelic quality to it. With the stunning contrasts of darkness and light, Karl Freund, the cinematographer of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (and later, I Love Lucy) demonstrates why, 100 years later, he remains one of the most influential figures of the art form.
This film is in the public domain, so stream it on YouTube or Kanopy
The Keep (Directed by Michael Mann, 1983)
This one may be for committed die-hard horror fans only. The Keep is a supernatural horror film and just the second feature film from Michael Mann (who has directed Heat, the Oscar-nominated The Insider and many others films since). Set in the final days of World War II, The Keep follows a brigade of Nazis who seek to release a demon from a locked-down keep (a hiding place in a medieval castle) deep in Eastern Europe’s Carpathian mountains, in order to fight back the Allies and win the war. To do so, they locate a Jewish historian (played by Ian McKellen) in a concentration camp and enlist his aide in translating Old Slavonic messages to carry out the spell. He finds himself face-to-face with the demon, the malevolent Molasar, who promises him a Faustian bargain should he aid in his escape. Unfortunately, post-production challenges ruined any chance the film had of being seen in its intended form. It is seen as an unfinished or abandoned film that Mann has largely disowned. Yet it is not without its charms and capital-V “Vibes.” With a stellar cast, including Gabriel Byrne and Scott Glenn, and a mesmerizing score by Tangerine Dream, any fans of 1980s horror movies will find something to appreciate here.
Available for rent on Amazon, or stream it on PlutoTV