Relic (2020) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 22

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Time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I’m gettin’ older, too.

Relic is a disturbing film rife with the horror that we all must face one day. Without monsters or gore, this film takes viewers to a place of dread that might be all too familiar to some. It may be my favorite psychological horror film from this year’s 31 Days of Horror.

Before Viewing

If the trailer is anything to go by, this film looks very spooky and unsettling. A woman and her daughter are looking for their mother/grandmother in the woods. It’s been a few weeks since they talked, and the elder woman is missing. Until she shows up unexpectedly back in the house, disoriented and with a large bruise on her chest. The elder woman is convinced there’s something under the bed, to which her daughter placates her by looking. There’s something under the bed! And, there appears to be something else in this old Relic of a house!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

Daughter, Kay (Emily Mortimer), and granddaughter, Sam (Bella Heathcote), arrive in Creswick, Australia, after they receive a call from the local police regarding a missing Edna (Robyn Nevin), their mother/grandmother. Kay explores Edna’s house, finding Post-It notes reminding her to take pills or to turn off the tap, but no Edna. She stops by the police station to file a report with the constable. Sam hears weird noises coming from inside the walls and discovers a black mold growing on the wallpaper around the house. It appears that Edna just up and vanished one day, leaving her life behind. Kay straightens a chair that is mysteriously facing towards a window, back towards the room.

The young man who lives next door, Jamie (Chris Bunton), stops by to say hello to Sam. She is friendly with him, and he explains that his dad won’t let him come by to visit Edna anymore. Kay cleans up around the house, dusting and doing dishes. She plays a tune on the old piano when she hears a noise upstairs. The audience sees some shape moving subtly behind her. Sam finds a note that says, “Don’t follow it.” That evening, Kay has a dream about a cabin in the woods with a decomposing body of an old man inside. The front door of that dream cabin has the same stained-glass window as the front door of Edna’s house. She awakens and crawls into bed with Sam. As she sleeps, a hand strokes Kay’s hair.

The next morning, Kay discovers Edna in the kitchen. She ignores, or is incapable of answering, Kay’s questions about her whereabouts. A doctor examines Edna and suggests that Kay and Sam watch her for a while. Edna also has a giant bruise on her sternum, which she can’t explain. Edna gifts her wedding ring to Sam, but later accuses her of stealing when she notices it on the granddaughter’s finger. Kay finds her father’s sketchbook, which has a picture of the cabin from her dream. It belonged to Kay’s great-grandfather and was on this property before Edna’s house was built. The stories were that he “wasn’t all there” in the end. Kay visits a retirement facility for Edna and breaks down, crying, in that car afterwards.

Edna claims that someone keeps coming into the house. The banging noise in the walls continues, but appears to be just an unbalanced washing machine. The automated security lights keep turning on during the night, revealing nothing. Edna mutters that “they” (Kay and Sam) aren’t really her relatives. Sam asks Jamie’s dad (Jeremy Stanford) about Edna. He relates the story of Jaime playing hide and seek, when Edna locked him in a closet for hours. He screamed to get out, but to no avail. Kay follows Edna into the woods, where the elderly woman tries to bury a photo album, claiming it will be safer out here.

Sam investigates the closet Jamie was closed inside of, seeing claw marks from the boy’s nails. She discovers a long hallway in the back, hidden by stacks of boxes and furniture. Walking through it, the passage extends behind the walls of the house into a labyrinth where Sam becomes lost and starts banging on the walls, shouting for help. Kay returns Edna to the house, where the elderly woman loses control of her bladder. Kay puts her mother into the tub, where Edna begins picking at her bruise, now just rotting flesh. The water overflows the tub and reaches a portable electric heater, causing a power outage.

Kay looks for Edna, who has gone missing, and finds her mother digging at rotting flesh on her face with a knife. Edna’s leg snaps when she turns towards her daughter. Kay runs, finding Sam inside the maze-like halls. They escape by breaking through a moldy wall section into the living room. A corpse-like Edna comes for them, and Kay hits her with a metal pipe. Edna’s ragged breath echoes through the house. Kay sees a Post-It note that says “I Am Loved” and decides to carry her grotesque-looking mother upstairs. She gently begins peeling the rotten flesh from Edna’s body, revealing a desiccated husk underneath. Kay lays her mother on the bed and slowly strokes her head, as Sam enters the bedroom. She lies down behind Kay and Edna, noticing a small black bruise on Kay’s neck.

“I’m losing everything, Kay.” – Edna

If there’s a horror film that might make you cry, Relic is probably it. This has been the most surprising movie on 31 Days of Horror this month, eliciting both chills and pathos. It’s the fourth film in a week looking at films by female directors, following Near Dark, Jennifer’s Body, and The Invitation. Directed by Australian filmmaker Natalie Erika James, Relic is her first feature-length film, which she co-wrote with Christian White. They would reteam four years later on the prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, Apartment 7A, as both writers and director. What makes the film unique in the landscape of horror films is its ability to unnerve audiences with creepy elements, which eventually are explained as a metaphor for aging and dementia. It’s not a film that gets into audiences’ faces with scary creatures or shocking jump cuts. It’s a slow-burn film with a lot of stillness and atmosphere, which creates anticipation as the viewer tries to piece together what is happening, much like the characters of Kay and Sam.

Relic opens with shots of various elements of Edna’s house, such as her hand-sculpted candles and the stained glass inset in her front door. The camera lingers on an overflowing bathtub, following the water as it runs out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and towards the bare feet of an old woman who is standing naked in her living room. She glances over her shoulder towards the camera as the title card appears. The cinematography is dark, the camera floats, and the music is ominous, but there’s nothing inherently scary about what is shown. It sets the mood for the film, which often feels like a misty memory or a dream that you can’t quite recall. James sets up a compelling supernatural story, which begins with Edna (potentially) being abducted by something outside her home. Kay discovers the ominous note “Don’t follow it,” among other ones stating ”take pills” or “turn off the tap.” In these moments of Kay and Sam waiting in the house for Edna to return, James performs some subtle misdirection by having blurry shapes (shadows really) in the background slowly move. She somehow creates a frame where the viewer’s eyes are naturally drawn to the area of the movement, and if people don’t happen to be looking that way, they still will catch “something” moving in their periphery. There’s definitely something in the house, but what? It’s unsettling as the shapes continue appearing in dark backgrounds until the culmination when Kay puts her mother to bed. Edna believes that something is under the bed and asks Kay to check. The daughter cursorily checks, but Edna calls her bluff, forcing Kay to lie down on the floor to peer into the darkness under the bed. Ragged breathing and a nearly imperceptible lifting of the bed skirt on the other side catch audiences unaware as Kay jolts back up, shocked by a book that has fallen off the bed, rather than a monster from beyond.

Between these sightings of apparent paranormal activity and the setting of a house that is growing with black mold, the audience is primed for a horrific reveal. Just how are the strange visions/dreams that Kay has of the cabin and the rotting corpse inside related to the overall tale of Edna’s abduction? The tension builds as Sam investigates the story that Edna locked her young neighbor inside a closet for hours. The closet, which is like a Tardis (bigger on the inside), has passageways that extend, somehow, behind the walls of the house in a way that is physically impossible. When Sam tries to turn around, she finds the same intersection behind her as was in front of her. The claustrophobia builds as the walls and ceiling narrow, forcing her to crawl. What sort of hell dimension has she entered? As the film climaxes, with the rotting form of Edna coming towards Kay and Sam, the true revelation of the film comes to light. There’s nothing mystical or supernatural about the house or Edna’s abduction. The entirety of Relic is a metaphor for Edna’s dementia. The notes around her house are all explained as relics of someone who is suffering from forgetfulness and may need them as reminders. Her fear of people coming into the house, family members who aren’t who they seem, or forgetting that she gave her granddaughter an heirloom, can all be chalked up to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s or some other memory-altering disease. Relic sees losing one’s mind as the most horrific thing that can happen. The film allows the audience to walk in Edna’s shoes for 90 minutes as imagery confuses or frightens, in much the same way a person suffering from dementia may feel.

Kay’s part in the process is to ignore what is happening as much as possible. She has to return to doing work rather than looking after her mother. She makes a special trip into the city to look for a nursing home to deal with Edna, rather than taking Sam’s suggestion of moving in–which would be beneficial for everyone. Kay beats the zombie-like Edna with a pipe as she and Sam try to escape from the house, eager to be free of the horror. She then notices the note, written in Edna’s hand, which would remind her that she is loved. Imagine forgetting your family and friends, but being able to see a note that you wrote, which reminds you that there are still people who love you. This message knocks Kay out of her selfishness. She carries the disgusting body of her mother upstairs and lovingly begins to peel off the rotting flesh. The bruising has overtaken Edna’s body and caused her normal appearance to become horrific. But her daughter looks past everything that is superficial as she comforts the scared woman. Sam returns, and grandmother, mother, and daughter all lie in bed together, a symbol of the familial connection between them all. The audience sees the connection of genealogy between everything. The stained glass window from the original great-grandfather’s cabin now lives in Edna’s home, a black mold growing over it. It’s something that has been passed down through the generations, just as the genetic predisposition for dementia continues to be passed along. Sam noticing a small bruise on her mother’s neck indicates that the same “infection” will one day consume Kay the way it has with Edna. At this moment, the care and nurturing that Kay provides for her mother creates such a feeling of sadness and sorrow that one can’t help but be moved. The film transitions from an unknown horror to an elegant moment of empathy between a family.

This is a completely unexpected ending to the film, which audiences might imagine as becoming something more horrific, like Hereditary. Even with this change of direction, Relic is still a strong horror film. It provides ample scares but also creates an explanation for its horror. That explanation doesn’t make the horror any less scary, but it puts everything in context. We all live our lives coming closer to death every single day. Sometimes, the mind fails before the body, which can be frustrating and challenging, not just for those affected but also for their family members. Perhaps Relic can provide a little insight for those struggling with such a curse, as well as a reminder about the best ways to provide dignity and respect to those affected.

Assorted Musings

• Relic is Emily Mortimer’s second appearance in this year’s 31 Days of Horror after Scream 3.
• The real horror in the film is the olive pizza Sam eats. Each slice appears to be covered with black olives. Gross!