Movie Breakdown: Relic (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
This movie looks f’n scary. And not in the “pandemic-knocking-on-my-bedroom-window-while-the-American-government-flies-fighter-planes-over-national-monuments-instead-of-doing-a-damn-thing” kind of scary. Just like normal, good old fashioned, a little-pee-in-my-pants, terrifying. This is what I want right now. This kind of terror.
Post-Screening Ramble:
Relic is a very, very scary film as well as a very, very sad film. Director Natalie Erika James has crafted the type of horror where you know only enough about your characters so the waves of emotion and fear will crash even more heavily down upon you. Emily Mortimer plays Kay, called out to the small town of Cresswick because her mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) has gone missing. She brings her daughter, Sam (Bella Heathcote), and after a few days of searching, Edna pops back up. But, as you would expect, things are not okay with Edna or with the house or with a lot of things. The relationships between the three generations of women are tense from the start – Kay works too much, Sam not enough, Edna is clearly losing it but refuses to do anything about it – and the taut threads pulled between them only adds to the terse atmosphere of the house, a family home passed down through the generations with all the creeptastic trimmings dragged along with it. Things go badly for all three generations and James does a fine job of deftly, quickly building a looming sense of impending danger for all involved. When the shit hits the fan, and does it ever, the pop of the bubble is palpable, the madness that follows a delightfully fucked-up release. Mortimer, Nevin and Heathcote do fine work here, exuding the sadness and the stubbornness a parent’s decline into dementia (regardless the cause) tangles us in. There’s a moment with Kay and her mother where James almost convinces us her madness is something normal (and maybe it is), not tainted by historically supernatural forces, and maybe Kay, maybe she can help, maybe she can avoid nursing homes, and pull her mother into her own embrace and the years of emotional head-butting that clearly exists between these two can fall to the wayside. It’s a glimmer of sad hope, a daughter stepping out of her comfort zone to try and do better neatly blended with the rest of the film’s creeping, moldy horror. The emotion, the scares, they build off each other and Relic is a strong outing from a clearly skilled new voice in horror.
One Last Thought:
Rotting flesh on a living person gets me every goddamn time. Bleck.
