Her past and future are haunting and inescapable in this twisted tale
The horror genre, in some deserved cases, has earned the stigma of offering the public nothing more than broad and reductive characters and plots to attract the lowest common denominator of the public. As with all generalizations, there are a number of outliers, as the horror world has often found ways to offer commentary on not just cultural struggles but emotional introspection as well. Thanks to movies like the Babadook, Get Hereditary Power and In recent years, audiences received a more existential and challenging fare and helped expand the genre's landscape. Relic is the latest film to take horrific emotional struggles from the real world and explore them in a visceral way, resulting in an unsettling allegory for dealing with the acceptance of no longer recognizing the people you once held closest to you.
In response to the neighbors not seeing her elderly mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) in a few days, Kay (Emily Mortimer) heads to her mother's remote home with her own daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) in tow. As the pair tidy up Edna's house while she waits for her to reappear, it becomes apparent that Edna's dementia is only getting worse, as confirmed by her surprise reappearance of her without remembering where she had been. The more time Kay and Sam spend watching the family matriarch lose touch with reality, the more they wonder if it's due to her mental decline or evidence of a real-world threat, which also forces them to make drastic decisions. on how to deal with the situation.
The opening scene of the film establishes that a malevolence will escalate throughout the narrative, keeping the audience on the brink as we witness a series of worldly encounters. While all of the women in the film appear to have a relatively healthy relationship with each other, it only takes one specific trigger to ignite the storylines about incidents that everyone is doing their best to ignore. The topic of ignoring the underlying rot is explored figuratively and literally, whether it's Kay and Sam arguing about Sam's educational future or discovering mold in various corners of Edna's house. This theme is most apparent with the discovery of an old shed on the sprawling property Kay's grandfather spent his last years on, staying close enough to claim he was being watched, but far enough away to forget it existed.
These tragic struggles are what we have to face more often than we would like. Whether it's dementia, cancer, or another terminal illness, children are often faced with seeing their parents decay on an unfamiliar timeline. Ultimately, Kay wants the best for her mother, but that means sending her to a retirement home where she will be someone else's problem, making her life more convenient, or that means asking her mother to move in with her to move on. their last days, months, or years in a loving home, despite their impact on Kay's normal life? We all know that our loved ones live on borrowed time, no matter how much we want to think that they will be with us forever.
This is not to say that Relic is only effective on this philosophical theme, as it offers a series of spooky imagery and surprising noises to sporadically ease the tension of the building, although ultimately it is these wrong directions that distract viewers in some way. of the core concept being explored. It is not until the final scenes of the film that things become more evident that everything has been built to be confronted by what you fear most and if you embrace this inevitability with loving arms, regardless of the pain it will cause, or if you run away and try. Ignore the reality that a similar fate awaits you.
It may seem reductive to compare Relic to movies like Babadook, Saly Hereditary based on their theme or tone, but another recurring theme among all of these films is that they are the directorial debut of their directors. Relic Director Natalie Erika James proves with her film that, like Jennifer Kent, Jordan Peele and Ari Aster before her, personal stories are the ones most worth telling, even if such a specific story could alienate viewers. . From a narrative perspective, James's film (which he co-wrote with Christian White) does not simplify the narrative to cater to the masses, as they take us down a cerebral path, even if some of the scares feel more like they are included to keep. the audience's attention and the movie could have been just as effective without them. Despite the movie chaos that builds up in the third act, James
