Film Review: RELIC (2020): A Psychological Drama That Doesn’t Offer the Standard Thrills and Chills

Relic Review

Relic (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Natalie Erika James, and starring Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin, and Bella Heathcote.

Relic is the debut feature from director Natalie Erika James and is an American-Australian horror film, which was written by James and Christian White. The film follows three generations of women as they are being haunted by a sinister presence in their family home, all while one is being consumed by dementia in her growing age.

The film opens with an overflowing bathtub, the camera follows the water on its journey from the tub to the floor, all the way out the restroom and down the stairs where it meets a pair of feet which belong to an old naked woman who is standing in the dark. This scene sets the tone for the film, letting its audience know that we’re about to be brought on a dark journey of the unknown. As something begins to move in the shadows, without showing us what it is, the scene cuts to a car driving along the road while a voicemail plays. It’s a message left for Kay (Emily Mortimer), which plays as the car drives and informs her that her mother, Edna (Robyn Nevin), hasn’t been seen in days and it has become worrisome for the neighbors. To me, this was a very interesting way to set up the first act, giving us the information we need to see where we are with the characters without revealing too much and having too much going on.

When the car arrives at the family home, we see that there are two people in the car, Kay and her daughter, Sam (Bella Heathcote). They enter the home to search for Edna, but there’s no sign of her. We are then given more information on Edna, who apparently constantly forgets things. While waiting til they find Edna, Kay and Sam have a conversation about where Sam is in life, revealing that the pair don’t really have a relationship, considering Kay didn’t know that Sam had lost her job and was now bartending. We also learn that Sam is a college dropout with no aspirations or future plans. As the film continues and they continue to search for Edna, all while going through her cluttered house, we get several random bumps and un-explainable noises in the darker scenes or when one of them is in the house alone. I felt like those scenes could have added more thrill than they did, they seemed very short and just when you’re pulled into what could be going on, it cuts to another unrelated scene. For example, there’s a scene where the washer is running on its own and Sam goes to check it out. She turns it off but as she walks away, something bangs the washer from the inside. Instead of going to check what it is, she just pauses and the scene cuts to the next one. Its sort of like those scenes were put in there just to remind us that we’re watching a horror movie. Sam starts finding random notes in random places, letting us know that Edna knows she forgets things and has to constantly post reminders around her so she doesn’t entirely forget. While being in the house, we’re also brought into Kay’s nightmares, which she has a few times throughout the film and is the same exact thing each time. It’s a deteriorating house with haunting images of rotting corpses. I think this sequence is done really well with the eerie and creepy vibe the director is trying to give its viewer, but we don’t understand why she’s having the nightmare until the end of the film.

Before we even know it, Edna pops up finally in the kitchen, almost as if she hadn’t been missing for a few days. She won’t answer as to where she was but Kay brushes it off and assumes it’s because she forgets things. It isn’t until Kay finds blood on her nightgown that she begins to worry about her mother’s whereabouts. She even considers putting her into an old folks home so that she’s constantly looked after, but doesn’t want to just have her mother move in with her. They already had a distant relationship previously, yet instead of taking her in and helping her herself, she’d rather just have strangers do it. Sam disagrees with this alternative and tries to reason with her mother, but Kay won’t budge. Edna even gives her two cents about the situation and even comments to Kay, “I like how you think its up to you”. The way the characters bounce off of one another and have little arguments here and there display the types of relationships they’ve always had and the types of personalities they possess.

We see Edna alone in her room later on and there’s a dark bruise on the center of her chest as if whatever took her, took a piece of her. That or the darkness of her dementia is starting to consume her from her center. She doesn’t tell anyone though, keeping it hidden. However, she continues to behave strange and sometimes even snaps when confronted. She’s found alone and in the dark, whispering to herself, hurting herself, forgetting incidents that happened just hours before, etc. Its unsettling how unpredictable she is and I think that’s exactly how the film was intended to feel for its viewer. Sam finally starts to see how sick her grandmother actually is and is starting to not recognize her at certain points. You can’t help but feel bad for Sam the more the film goes on because of the moments where she looks like she feels helpless. Heathcote’s performance being so raw and believable, that the actress stole the show for me.

It isn’t until we get to the last 15 minutes of the film where the tension and action picks up. We have Sam trapped within the cluttered house unable to find her an exit, the sequence definitely filmed in order to give the audience a claustrophobic feeling. As Sam is freaking out and losing her breath, I felt like I was too because of how the sequence is shown on screen. We cut back and forth between Sam and Kay; Kay who finds her mother stabbing at herself and breaking her bones, in which Kay realizes that something is possessing her. Sam and Kay are both in need of an escape, all while not knowing what exactly is happening around them. So they’re not even able to process it all at the moment, which also caused panic in my own state of mind for the characters. Not a lot of films are able to reel a viewer in like that, making you feel as if you’re in the scene with the characters, experiencing what they’re experiencing.

Kay and Sam finally run into each other and run to escape from Edna who is trying to now attack them. Kay ends up killing Edna and as they’re about to leave, she realizes she can’t leave her mom there to rot so she carries her up to her bedroom and peels off her layers of skin until she’s all bone. It’s metaphorical in the sense that she has literally watched her mother rot till her death, losing herself piece by piece, the house rotting away with her.

It’s very interesting how James showed the different parallels to dementia versus reality by using the house. It was as if the house was a metaphor for Edna’s mind as dementia consumed her till her death. The clutter, the notes, the evil presence, etc. The psychological breakdown that the film showed was what really got my interest and showed how you can bring the audience into a world that usually they can’t experience from a person’s point of view, so this was an interesting take filming wise. However, I expected the film to be more scary and thrilling based off of the trailer.

Rating: 7/10

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