Relic

Relic
Australia | 2019 | 89’ | Colour | English | English subtitle | Group: C
Director:Natalie Erika James

Like its Australian sister The Babadook, Relic is a domestic horror which looks at the idea of caring for someone – or something – which could turn out to be malevolent. For her debut, Natalie Erika James takes tackles dementia, so innately terrifying in itself and here depicted as an oozing darkness which is seeping through walls and minds. We’re in Melbourne, where Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) have come to find Kay’s mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) who has been reported missing. When she does mysteriously reappear, Edna is never quite the same from scene to scene: her large isolated house is also decaying from within, flipping backwards and forwards between reassuring comfort and creepy menace. Three excellent performances anchor this brooding drama; if it’s not as dramatically terrifying as The Babadook, it’s mentally far more insidious as the ultimate destination finally reveals itself for all three leads.

FIONNUALA HALLIGAN

When Edna, the elderly and widowed matriarch of the family, goes missing, her daughter Kay and granddaughter Sam travel to their remote family home to find her. Soon after her return, they start to discover a sinister presence haunting the house and taking control of Edna.

Natalie Erika James is a Japanese-Australian writer, director, and producer based in Melbourne, Australia. Her 2016 short Creswick premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and won the 2017 AWGIE Award for Best Short Form screenplay from the Australian Writer’s Guild. Relic is her debut feature and had its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival. As well as directing commercials and music videos through Melbourne-based production company Fiction, she is developing Japanese folk horror Drum Wave which was selected for the IFFAM production market last year and won the best co-production prize.