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Relic Examines the Horror of Elder Abandonment


Watching Relic, a new Australian horror film directed by Natalie Erika James, I was often reminded of Hereditary. It’s certainly not as good as Ari Aster’s creepy family thriller, but it does touch on a number of the same themes and with some similar aesthetic choices. The foreboding house is a major element of both as is the idea of a family’s dysfunction being much more akin to a curse. Relic though seems to have a little bit more sympathy for its family, and especially the matriarch who is the source of most of the terror experienced by her daughter and granddaughter.
She’s played by Robyn Nevin, an actress before now best known for a minor role in the Matrix sequels. And Nevin is very good, both menacing and pitiful as she accentuates the all-round confusion of this dementia-ridden woman living alone out in the country, estranged at least physically from any family. That isolation is the key to what’s actually going on when her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) come to find the house in a state of ugly disarray, unkempt and moldy, and with Edna nowhere to be found.
Relic does a fine job setting up a lot of eerie clues to something terrifying: a large mysterious bruise on Edna’s chest, the growing mold around the house, recurring nightmares for Kay of a cabin in the woods and a decaying body -this latter one especially giving way to some frightful but not overtly grisly imagery. There are stories of people not coming to check on Edna, of her accidentally locking a neighbourhood boy with autism in her walk-in closet, traumatizing the poor guy. But what’s striking about these things is that they don’t immediately read as omens of something sinister; rather unfortunate side effects of someone with dementia living alone.
That aspect of the film was something that particularly resonated with me, someone aware that Alzheimers’ disease runs in my family. My Opa, though he never locked anyone away, did keep his place untidy as his disease worsened, and aimlessly wandered off into his city on one occasion. There’s one scene where Sam, affectionate towards Edna more than her mother, is given the wedding ring that had a great emotional value to her grandmother as a gift -only for Edna to later deny giving it to her and violently try to get it back. It’s a not uncommon scenario for people close to those with deteriorating mental faculties, but it’s played in the film as a suspense beat. I don’t think there’s something wrong with that or that it’s offensive though. Because it is scary to see a loved one act like that, overly defensive and self-contradicting. Throughout the movie, Edna isn’t played as a kind of hostile force as much as a person in need of real help and your sympathy. This is especially so in those scenes where she does seem to be herself, making witty comments about her relatives or expressing apprehension, loneliness, or fear of her house -which is fairly, exceptionally creepy. You can’t blame Kay wanting to move her into a retirement home.
James drawing on elder neglect for horror but in a distinctly humane way is what gives the movie its’ particular potency. As much as the movie allows us to sympathize with Edna, it also has us understanding Kay, now regretful for how little a part she’s been in her mothers’ life, and Sam, wanting to reforge that connection. We’ve probably been in each of their shoes more than Edna’s. And both Mortimer and Heathcote deliver good performances in fulfilling these roles -even if the former occasionally struggles with her Australian accent. There’s something of a dark morality parable at play too that goes along with that aforementioned Hereditary-like notion of a family curse. Relic doesn’t end in a big scare extravaganza (though fear not, that does come), but rather in a moment of silent relaxed tension that is tenderly compassionate though utterly horrifying -a perfect marriage of the films’ most dominant qualities.
Plenty of stuff in the film is disturbing, the horror less gore-based and more just basking in the unpleasant. Edna’s bruise and the mold are notable gross-out examples, made starker by an unflattering intimacy to them; but then there are things like the claustrophobic nature of the house itself, full of rubbish and enclosed spaces, and yet easy to get lost in. The darkness and griminess of Kay’s cabin too makes for a particularly frightful atmosphere, and throughout it all James demonstrates a keen sense of staging, knowing where to draw your eyes in the darkness and make you think you know what you’re seeing. This is especially well-done during one scene of the tenser climax.
Even in this year without movies, Relic is not quite one of the best horror options available -both The Invisible Man and Shirley have already come (undoubtedly, it could have benefited from having Elisabeth Moss). But Natalie Erika James’ directorial debut is interesting enough to recommend, for its horror elements and for their application as a discussion point on our relationships to our elders -that cabin could have been as much Edna’s own point of view as it is Kay’s fear. And it leaves you with the affirmation that it is all a cycle. We too might be in Edna’s place some day, and supernatural interference or not, we in our frailty don’t deserve to be left alone.

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