The camera slowly zooms in on an urn, illuminated on a mantel by pulsing multicolored lights. Death has visited this house before we know anything about it, and not even the nostalgic, warm glow of Christmas can deny the macabre chill we feel right away. Suddenly cutting to half a year later, we learn through exposition that the urn contains the ashes of Edna's husband. The elderly widow recently disappeared from her remote country home in Australia, so we join her daughter Kay and granddaughter Sam as they travel from Melbourne to the home. The house is locked from the inside, but there's no sign of granny here; the camera lingers over dusty household artifacts, a stained-glass window, waxy residue from Edna's candle making, relics of her life that seem to be housed in a dusty, tenebrous museum.
The first act of Relic works incredibly hard and indelibly well at evoking foreboding, an aesthetic choice increasingly popular in horror movies these days. The thick atmosphere of this Gothic house serves as a grim backdrop to the family drama that is all too familiar. Edna appears to be suffering from dementia. Sticky notes litter the house with sometimes functional, sometimes cryptic notes: one demands, "DON'T FOLLOW IT" a la Amityville, and it proves the apparent bewilderment of a disintegrating mind. Kay tells the police about the prior Christmas when Edna flooded the house, about lapses in memory, about the hoarding in her bedroom; the police search the woods and find nothing. Meanwhile, Kay is disturbed by the bowl of rotting fruit on the table and the spots of black mold all over the house.
When Edna suddenly appears in the kitchen, the movie shifts from a chilly creeper to a slow burn. The dynamics of these leading women propel us through act two: the three generations living under the same roof reveal certain strains and affections that are not always what we expect. Edna (Robyn Nevin) was clearly a proud and strong woman -- still is, at least emotionally -- and it seems to have somewhat alienated her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) even as it has endeared the distanced and less scarred Sam (Bella Heathcote). Concerned for Edna's well-being, Kay and Sam elect to stay for a time, even as it already apparent to us that Edna needs to be placed in assisted living. Kay must know better though, and even looking at potential new homes for her mother is exhausting and apparently shameful. She's in for a long, tough trial of willpower. Anyone who has lived with or cared for someone with dementia or Alzheimer's knows, and will surely connect instantly with this movie's shorthand for the deeply troubling issues that ensue. For example, Edna seems occasionally frightened, saying the house seems larger and unfamiliar since her husband's death, exactly the sensation described by many a widow or widower.
Of course, being a horror movie, the real horror is buttressed and contrasted with a secondary horror, and it is around the halfway mark that we realize there may be a more sentient malevolence in this house than dementia. What's endlessly fascinating about Relic, though, is the lengths to which it refuses to give solid answers or explanations about the supernatural elements at work here, or even if anything paranormal is happening at all. First-time feature film director Natalie Erika James increasingly allows for the weird to happen, but there's no concrete evidence for any of it; paired as it is with a story of mental illness and aging, the film staunchly frustrates arguments to define the haunting. She suggests a demonic or ghostly presence, even showing it once quite clearly, even as our perspective begins to warp like Edna's has. By the third act, we are as lost as the three women in the labyrinthine hallways of this house that grows and shrinks, twists and turns beyond rationality, time, or space.
Is it real? Definitely, if by "real" we mean consequential for the characters and for our own experience. An inciting incident is teased at one point, suggesting that an unhinged great-grandfather's cottage on the property may have transferred madness (or more literal demons) to the house via the stained-glass window; I took this to symbolize the past returning to haunt the present rather than a portal for spirits, but I suppose that's up for interpretation. The problem is that if you want to lean into the ghostly side of things, you'll wind up horribly frustrated. Though James -- no doubt influenced by her Japanese heritage -- leans heavily into J-horror tropes of a rotting house and sickly, pallid bodies in a shadowy void, there are precious few scares until the surprisingly violent climax of this movie. The plot never really amounts to much here, but the character drama spins suddenly into psychological horror when the house comes alive, more or less claiming what is left of Edna and turning the finale into a home invasion thriller that had a baby with spiritual possession.
It might be difficult to swallow on purely psychological terms, but emotionally, even the finale feeds into the allegory, spectacularly dramatizing the violence and cruelty these degenerative mental illnesses cause on those we love the most. And somewhere between the emotional gut-punches, uncompromisingly beautiful and cerebral aesthetic, and downright terrifying revelations, Relic is one of the most surprising and satisfying movies this year. Hopefully it manages to reach a wider market -- it helps, surely, that Jake Gyllenhaal and the Russo brothers produced it -- so that James can make more amazing movies!
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