RELIC (2020) film review

A haze of red and purple light fades in and out of the blackness, their source becoming more and more distinct as the hues continue to retreat and then reappear from the originating void. They are part of a string of Christmas lights woven across a mantle top, intertwined with the dusty knick-knacks that have accumulated there and since become a part of the place itself.

Then, a window. Stained glass and octagonal, it depicts two trees in the foreground against a backdrop of sweeping greens and a blue sky. It presents a beautiful, calming landscape— exactly what one might like to imagine is lying just beyond their door.

From the very beginning, Relic (2020), directed by Natalie Erika James, concerns itself with the iconography of the home. The distinctive details that comprise the country of one’s life after it has been well lived. There are stories in those details, some good and some bad. Memories long forgotten and ghosts which remain very much alive.

The film concerns Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) as they seek to discover what became of Kay’s missing mother Edna (Robyn Nevin). As the story progresses and the mystery deepens upon Edna’s abrupt return from the woods surrounding her home, the family is haunted both emotionally and physically as Edna’s burgeoning dementia begins to manifest in new and disturbing ways.

Emily Mortimer turns in an incredibly moving performance as Kay. Kay is organized and professional, focused on work and formulating a “system” for everything. Of course, that system collapses in the face of her mother’s deteriorating mind, presenting Kay with a reality that she clearly feels should have been tended to much earlier. It’s Kay’s aching, mounting guilt that fuels the escalating tension in the narrative and it is expertly guided by Mortimer’s deeply felt performance.

Bella Heathcote is also incredibly harrowing in the role of both daughter and granddaughter, caught in the middle of her mother’s guilt and her own sense of duty toward caring for her ailing grandmother. Robyn Nevin is captivating as Edna. Her mind and memory effortlessly flip from scene to scene and moment to moment, stressing an interpersonal pressure between the three women that not only serves the uneasiness surrounding the narrative but makes each character interaction all that more affecting.

Then there’s the house itself. A cluttered mash of curios and antiques, hidden rooms, and narrow hallways that seem as impenetrable and inexplicable as Edna’s fractured mind. Still, it’s by way of the house, its silver-framed photographs, ancient mirrors, and locked doors that Kay and Sam are able to experience the white-hot pang of terror that Edna does at the hands of her own mind. It’s the cancerous decay of what was once so familiar made physical, the dizzying disorientation of being simultaneously lost and trapped made manifest.

Natalie Ericka James brings the film to the screen with deeply disturbing and carefully crafted visual metaphor. The tension is immaculately paced, deriving from the desolation of grief and guilt, that special brand of pain only family can conjure. The marriage between light and dark in every scene directly relates to the manner in which she draws out a scare, ensuring that the viewer is constantly paying attention to every corner of the frame. Relic is a movie that demands your attention at all times and constantly rewards for having been given it.

The house and the characters are surrounded by woods. A mysterious place, ancient and unforgiving, with a storied past as unfathomable as any. Still, there’s that octagonal window in the house that presents a tranquil version of the trees around them. It is said to have come from the cabin of a distant relative that used to reside in those same woods. Much like Edna, the man who had lived there also had a waning mind and no one to care for him. And, as a result, he did not enjoy a happy end.

Still, his window survives. His story is a part of the house. A house overtaken with a creeping blackness, a mold-like rot that mirrors a strange bruise that has sat upon Edna’s chest since first returning from the wood. A fading remnant of the past as inescapably nostalgic as it is infuriatingly perplexing.

Relic begins with light. The soft glowing hues of Christmas, the embodiment of family togetherness, tenderness, and love. A memory, for some, very much worth living in. Still, memories are not as static as we’d like them to be. Sometimes they fade. Chip. Fall in between the cracks. And sometimes they decay.

Occasionally the atrophy is so extreme that some memories are scarcely recognizable by their host. It’s then that the emotional and physical amalgam of one’s life transforms, that the people, places, and things which engineer one’s world turn to shadow and putrescence.

Relic is a film brimming with dread. A stunning work of captivating, emotional horror that places director Natalie Erika James alongside the very best visionaries in the genre. It weaves the supernatural with intimate real-life trauma, all the while delivering a level of body horror that will make even the most veteran horror aficionado squirm.

The film is a personal work that will consume and haunt, reminding those who view it that the true horror in life may well be its inevitable degeneration. Especially for people who choose a life of love. Of memory.

And, in the end, of ghosts.