Relic

STORY: When Edna suddenly goes missing, her daughter and granddaughter come looking for her. But Edna’s reappearance comes with disturbing sounds and occurrences in their family home. What horrid secrets could the house be hiding?

REVIEW: When Kay (Emily Mortimer) and Sam (Bella Heathcote) visit Edna’s home they notice two very strange things. There are many post-it notes stuck on the furniture and there is black mould-like substance on the walls. Their search for Edna (Robyn Nevin) doesn’t yield any results and she reappears just as mysteriously as she had disappeared. Edna looks visibly disoriented and is unaware of her own disappearance. While Edna’s check-up suggests she is mentally and physically alright, enough hints are dropped to suggest that she may be suffering from Alzheimer’s. Or is she? Mysterious occurrences and strange sounds emanating from the walls point towards a sinister energy occupying the house. But for Kay and Sam, Edna’s volatile and unpredictable behaviour is a bigger cause of worry than the things they cannot see clearly. Kay decides to move Edna to an assisted living facility in Melbourne, much to Sam’s contempt.

‘Relic’ isn’t your regular horror drama by any stretch of imagination. There are no obvious jump scares or attempts to spook you with cheap thrills like garish make-up and bloody encounters. No loud and jarring background score or dizzying camera movements either. Composer Brian Reitzell and sound designer Robert Mackenzie work in tandem to create subtly haunting sounds.

Director and co-writer Natalie Erika James keeps it a slow-burn with the family’s relationship dynamics playing a major role in building up the narrative. The mother-daughter equation between the three women is extremely relatable and portrayed with finesse.

Much of the action takes places within the confines of Edna’s mysteriously spacious house and in the minds of the characters. That said, this isn’t one of those frustrating metaphorical horror sagas, where the audience is constantly and deliberately confused between reality and imagination.

Since there are only three main characters, it’s easier to focus on each one of them. Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote make for a perfect mother-daughter team with differing views on Edna. Mortimer is superbly convincing as the daughter, who loves her mother but needs to think rationally for her own sake. Heathcote matches her perfectly well with the idealism of a granddaughter, who cannot possibly see the reasoning behind the decision her mother takes for her own mother. But it is Robyn Nevin’s seasoned act that uplifts the film’s overall impact. The veteran actress is in solid form as a grieving widow, a lonely mother and a vulnerable soul battling mental and physical morbidities.

‘Relic’ moves at an unhurried pace but never does it drag. Along with its surreal and ghostly atmospherics, ‘Relic’ explores the most basic human emotions. It subtly underlines the fact that love, loss and longing can ultimately prove to be the biggest horrors of our life.