It’s a radical concept to put audiences directly in the mind of someone struggling with memory loss. And yet here we are with Natalie Erika James’ RELIC. Its alluring, woozy, creeping dread centers on a multi-generational family thrown into crisis after the eldest matriarch begins exhibiting extreme signs of dementia. The haunting, at times heart-wrenching horror is a slow-burn, taking its time to properly cultivate its prickly atmospheric pull.
Kay (Emily Mortimer) has recently returned to her secluded childhood home upon learning her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) has gone missing. Her mother had fled the home, fearing an evil presence plaguing her since her husband passed away – a presence that would leave lights on and doors open. Kay’s daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) has also uprooted her life, leaving university hoping to help with the search. As the pair re-acclimate to the eerie, molding manse, they too begin feeling uneasy and unmoored.
The search doesn’t last for long as Edna randomly returns from her mysterious sojourn. However, because of Mom’s special circumstances surrounding her diminishing mental capacities, Kay’s ordered to stay with her for the next few weeks to oversee the home and secure her mom’s well-being. She weighs putting her mother in a facility instead, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. So, succumbing to self-pressure, she takes on the challenge of caring for her ailing mother – going so far as to encourage Sam to go back to school. Only Edna’s problems worsen once all three women are together. In addition to physical changes, she exhibits terrifying moments of lucidity and anger, inflicting wrath on Sam. Kay’s trauma also begins bubbling to the surface, manifesting through nightmares about her grandfather’s cabin. Their time together won’t be one of healing, but rather one spent being hollowed out.
Bella Heathcote in RELIC. Courtesy of IFC Films.
A sinister unease coats the picture, from Steven Jones-Evans’ production design reflecting thematic motifs, to Charlie Sarroff’s cinematography mirroring a musty, foreboding sense of gloom. Brian Reitzell’s score builds taut tension in his compositions with discordant, swirling violins echoing Edna’s distrust, Sam’s confusion, Kay’s lingering resign and sadness. Robert Mackenzie’s sound design makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
James’ use of mise-en-scène elegantly enhances the narrative. The dank, damp forest that surrounds the property feels like a soggy, sorrowful prison, locking in Kay’s deeply repressed anguish. Grandpa’s cabin window that was raised and set in Edna’s home connotes trauma being passed down from one generation to another. The close-up of the rotting fruit on Edna’s counter brilliantly foreshadows the rotting decay that’s about to eclipse the trio’s relationship.
Unlike THE VISIT’s entertaining, albeit ageist superficiality, RELIC makes sufficient use of its atmosphere, visually contextualizing the debilitating illness’ complexities. It’s a haunted house flick without a spook. The concept is that senility is, in fact, the lurking boogeyman. James and co-screenwriter Christian White make the home itself a character, a physical representation of Edna’s crumbling mental state. The myriad long dark hallways and disorienting hidden corridors, cluttered with boxes blocking the way out, symbolize those same passages in Edna’s mind shutting down and memories being forever lost.
James’ artistic panache further augments the character-driven action. When we overhear Kay’s phone conversation expressing her emotional dilemma with her mom, she’s seen only in silhouette, a screen obscuring and fragmenting her image as she paces. The camera turns upside down and tilts to indicate these characters’ worlds being off-kilter. The picture’s cool gray color palette parallels the narrative’s emotional tonalities – the cooling of a once-warm relationship. There’s also some terrifying, indelible imagery of Edna’s physical demise with the disease morphing her from human to a far more insidious, grotesque entity.
RELIC is part of the dawning of a new subgenre in horror – one that stirs up empathy along with its atmospheric frights. For those who’ve gone through similar situations with loved ones, this speaks directly to the unbearable situation shouldered by all parties – not solely those suffering from dementia, but also for those caught in its radiating blast. Altogether insular and intimate, confining and claustrophobic, this one sucks the air out of the room in the best of ways.
Grade: B+
RELIC will be playing in select theaters, drive-ins and digital/ VOD on July 10.
That’s what I would say when my mother misplaced her purse, appointment book – something important. Only I was too young and not ripe in the head to understand that my mother was slipping away from me.
An object lost, important dates worth remembering gone, a phone number unable to be recalled. Seeing someone you love become a prisoner in her own body is horrifying. No one should have to live that way. Dementia is cruel and unforgiving; it killed my mother years before she fell asleep that last time.
Natalie Erika James’ feature debut, RELIC, uses the horror genre as a platform to interpret this cognitive decline. The film, like the disease itself, starts very mild. In the opening prelude, water flows over a bathtub basin and gradually cascades downstairs as an older woman stands resigned, naked. It was then I knew that this was going to be tough to watch and was going to be difficult to separate my own history of seeing how dementia has affected me.
A year later, the woman, Edna (Robyn Nevin), mysteriously vanishes. During the disappearance, daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) travel to her relatively remote country home, very concerned at what they might find. No trace of Edna or where she may have gone. The place is a mess, covered in dust, walls with black specks, closet cubbyholes of old knickknacks, and sticky notes to remember certain tasks.
When Edna emerges from the woods with just a few scrapes and a big bruise on her chest, she acts as if nothing happened. No big fuss worth sending out a search party, that’s for sure. She recognizes Kay and Sam and goes right back to a life of shuffling around the house and her hobby of carving designs into candles. Kay gets a little ferocious in trying to get an answer out of Mom and where she wandered off. Sam is just happy that Gran is back.
Just as dementia has its stages where mental deficiencies begin to accelerate as time goes on, RELIC moves at a similar clip. Scenes and episodes get more and more constraining. Edna becomes increasingly belligerent. Kay is finding it hard to cope with the idea of Mother going into assisted living after living alone without proper care for so long. Sam shows an eagerness to attend a school closer to Gran so she can take care of her. Edna won’t have it.
For the first two-thirds, it feels like we’re watching a haunted house movie wondering if, maybe, the “relic” is this old, decrepit house. Even before Edna’s arrival home, things were not as they seemed. Creaking floors is normal. Sounds coming from the walls are not. Then there are lurid dreams that lead to a harbinger of things to come. The old family home begins to show the fears of deterioration (remember those black specks on the wall?) and losing oneself.
RELIC is an unrelenting reminder that to keep family together, you must fight but also be willing to accept what is to come. Natalie Erika James astutely acknowledges that old age is no picnic. Here, it affects three generations in different ways, with a symbolic ending about transitioning.
Growing old is a perilous journey that saps our bodies and minds. Having been a bystander to my mother’s own sickness, there wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t wish I could slay the demon inflicting pain on her – and on me.
The demon may have won, but if I have learned anything from seeing what dementia does it is this: Mom never lost it. It was taken from her.
Grade: B
IFC Midnight will release RELIC on digital platforms on Friday. It is now playing at select drive-in movie theaters.
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