X
- 2020
- R
- IFC Midnight
- 1 h 29 m
- 2020
- R
- IFC Midnight
- 1 h 29 m
Summary When octogenarian Edna inexplicably vanishes, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) rush to their family’s decaying country home and find clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence. After Edna returns just as mysteriously as she disappeared, Kay’s concern that her mother...
Directed By: Natalie Erika James
Written By: Christian White, Natalie Erika James
- 2020
- R
- IFC Midnight
- 1 h 29 m
- 2020
- R
- IFC Midnight
- 1 h 29 m
Relic
77
6.1
Where to Watch
Summary When octogenarian Edna inexplicably vanishes, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) rush to their family’s decaying country home and find clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence. After Edna returns just as mysteriously as she disappeared, Kay’s concern that her mother...
Directed By: Natalie Erika James
Written By: Christian White, Natalie Erika James
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
77
100% Positive
37 Reviews
37 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
77
100% Positive
37 Reviews
37 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
James often frames her characters in close-ups with still backgrounds and lingers there for far too long, creating a transfixing atmosphere of discomfort. Through all her aesthetic craft, the house transforms into a physical manifestation of dementia with forgotten rooms, claustrophobic spaces, and walls that slowly close in on each other.
Combined with realistically messy family dynamics and expert turns from the ensemble cast — particularly Nevin, whose performance forges boldly into challenging territory — the result is powerful, if a style of horror audiences have grown used to in a post-A24 world.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 81 User Ratings
6.1
52% Positive
42 Ratings
42 Ratings
31% Mixed
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
17% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 81 User Ratings
6.1
52% Positive
42 Ratings
42 Ratings
31% Mixed
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
17% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
This. Is. Just. Amazing. The portrait of dementia is stunning. The photography of the film was perfect.
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Natalie Erika James in her incredible debut, brought my favourite film of the year so far. "Relic" is smart, tense, scary and incredibly beautiful. It has a great cast (but Mortimer's performance is the spotlight for me) and the movie builds to an electric third act with a powerful emotional punch that will leave you in tears while the credits roll.
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For most of its running time, Relic feels more like a chamber piece than a full-fledged horror outing, but a nail-biting third act ups the ante.
Relic posits that old age is not something to be reviled or worshiped, instead viewing aging as a continual process as opposed to a fearful spectre.
The kind of dread-infused slow burn that’s very much in vogue at the moment, Relic is so entirely, transparently, even explicitly about the horror of dementia and losing a loved one to it that the more traditional genre elements—like a potential supernatural presence in the house—feel rather redundant, maybe even unnecessary.
Despite minor misgivings, it is a thoroughly engaging horror film with more on its mind than simply building to a climax. This is a poignant observation on aging and death that is supported by a trio of knockout performances and a female-heavy production.
The film heralds the arrival a bold and formidable voice in horror cinema.
This film is very strange because it manages to create an atmosphere of increasing tension by being scary and very deep at the same time, but in the end it is too fragmented, you don't understand much and the ending that wants to be deep and beautiful doesn't really have too much sense.
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A haunted house film that benefits much more from the atmosphere than from the tension it manages to conjure.
Certainly, those who expect a horror story riddled with cheap jump scares will be greatly disappointed.
Like many recent films of the genre that have chosen to be deeper than many of the cheap productions that we see from studios like Blumhouse.
For what it matters, Relic is a story about deeply buried memories of past trauma.
Being a story about a ''haunted house'', the metaphor and the whole core of the matter lies in the fact that that home is a reflection of the mind state of its inhabitant and I say inhabitant because despite the fact that the three main characters are intertwined by blood. It's just one that is mentally drifting away.
And when that mind begins to collapse, the house begins to do the same.
This is a good slow-burner and to be honest while the supernatural element is present and is clearly an important part of the narrative, the essence of this story is more an allegory of a psychological breakdown and family issues.
Something that has been explored in recent and more successful films like Hereditary.
So I warn viewers because that tone and ambiguity are crucial for how this film works.
For my part I can only say that if you're into this kind of horror films, go for it.
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What a disappointment. I've seen a slew of recent IFC movies and they've all been bad. I get the point of it, but it's so slow and sparse and gross that I wished I'd have turned it off. You may as well watch a dead bird in a park decay. Many significant plot points were hard to catch, such as notes on the wall with hard-to-read poorly-written writing in thin pen that causes someone to cry, or too-quiet dialog from far away causing shock. There's some bizarre labyrinth scenes that go on too long, and the finale is ham-fisted. IFC tries to make A-production movies now mixed with slow navel-gazing and long drawn out scenes of people staring or slowly walking, and it just feels awkward and unnecessary. This could have been a thirty-minute arthouse short with how little happens in it, but everything's dragged out so much that it feels stretched unbearably thin. I'll be avoiding IFC movies for a while now.
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Bueno, no sé muy bien qué opinar de esta película.
Así de primeras, me dio la sensación de que la fotografía era demasiado oscura, y en general, me esperaba otra cosa, pero no sé si para bien o para mal, seguramente, para lo segundo.
Una cosa buena que tiene es que intenta dar terror sin recurrir al jumpscare, eso se agradece, pero todavía así, no logra lo que quería, o lo que debería.
Las interpretaciones no están mal, el elenco es bueno, de lo mejorcito de la peli, vaya.
Creo que no estaba preparado para un **** y es lo que fue, o lo que intenta ser, porque se construye pobremente, aunque con un crescendo narrativo, pero depende mucho de lo que cuenta, y si no te queda claro, se queda en flojilla, pero aún sabiéndolo, puede que también se quede, como es mi caso.
El tema que trata está bien, el elenco bien, no apuesta por los jumpscures, y cinematográficamente está cuidada, pero.
Pero hay que esperar mucho a la conclusión, es más emotiva que aterradora, no sabe muy bien lo que quiere, y tiene una narración fatigosa.
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Production Company
Carver Films,
Nine Stories Productions,
AGBO,
Screen Australia,
Film Victoria,
Huayi Brothers Pictures
Release Date Jul 10, 2020
Duration 1 h 29 m
Rating R
Tagline Everything Decays
Awards
Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards
• 6 Nominations
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
• 4 Nominations
Fright Meter Awards
• 4 Nominations
