LFF Review: Relic (Natalie Erika James)

In 2018, at our very own Femme Filmmakers Festival, a spooky film of just 9 minutes captured chilling themes of aging isolation and childhood relics. The marvelous Creswick, co-written and directed by Natalie Erika James, won the Red Lantern prize at FemmeFilmFest18, and turns out was a blueprint for an ambitious feature film.

James brought her own Japanese heritage to the table, as well as some personal experience with an ill parent. The unsettling, well-crafted nature of Creswick – with skeletal-like chairs and creaking machinery – clearly demonstrates a filmmaker who is not just a fan of the horror genre, but more than proficient at executing it.

Fast forward to this very year, and the promise of the first-time feature from Natalie Erika James arrives with Relic. And how refreshing it is to be confronted with age-old horror tropes and projections, and still have a film get under your skin just like our youthful days of the genre’s impact.

Femme Filmmakers Festival Review: Creswick (Natalie Erika James)

Much like Creswick – the very town prominent in both films – Relic attempts to bridge the generational gap by bringing the past and the present together. Those elements, whether all too real or extremely eerie, exude a kind of sad and scary familiarity.

Having seemingly locked herself in the house, leaving Post-it reminders scattered about, elderly Edna (Aussie acting veteran, Robyn Nevin) creates cause for concern with the local authorities. Her closest adult relatives, daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) are summoned from the urban bustle to the rural serenity of Australia. It is more than apparent that Edna can no longer fend for herself.

What director James does so well in the inch-perfect set-up is establish the three-way dilemmas and outlooks, the subtle horror elements, without rushing on ahead and not letting her characters breathe for themselves. Balancing the penetrating, emotive sensibilities of senility and the supernatural is a challenging feat. One which James cradles with more than enough respect to eliminate any preconceptions that this is just another crazy old lady picture.

Relic immerses its audience in what is inherently a horror film, but the story of family, of guardianship, is truly central to the whole thing. Sure, Edna appears to have plummeted into hoarding territory, but still leaves food out for a cat that has been dead for quite some time. Her daughter Kay is concerned, but looks to be heading for the welfare / retirement home option. While granddaughter Sam, younger and without all the facts, craves a bit more empathy and compassion.

The Long Cinematic Path of Folk Horror

Both are right to seek their respective remedies, but the gradual emergence of a more abstract, sinister force only heaps on the anxiety. Edna’s uncharacteristic behaviour is one thing, the unfathomable noises from inside the walls is something else. The worries for a family member and the unexplainable respiration of the dwelling prove to be a troubling cocktail.

The atmospheric chills seep closer, and slowly we’re pulled into the deep, dark of physical and emotional foundations. Once Edna reappears, it’s as if nothing is wrong. She gifts Sam a cherished ring, only later to accuse her of stealing it. And the local boy, Jamie, is forbidden to enter the house after an innocent game of hide-and-seek with Edna resulted in him being locked up for hours.

The conditions, in both humans and architecture, appear irrevocable as the hours tick on by. The walls push in, devouring the inhabitants – including us watching – with claustrophobia. Bruises on the human body seem to resemble rot or mold rather than something that naturally heals over time. Relic is not in essence a haunted house film as we know it, but the spooks rattle those same old chains.

By the film’s final act, as both Sam and Kay discover for themselves, passageways open to other looming corridors. The metaphors of restrained illness that can strike any of us come alive in the disfiguring of the house itself. The human spirit is tested and contorted in what almost turns to be an endless entrapment.

The Horror Genre Shutout at the Academy Awards

Natalie Erika James directs Relic with a confident, skilled manner. The film is hardly a slow-burn, but James has a steady poise to her filmmaking. The nurturing of the suspense gradually is what makes Relic work so well. The collaboration with the film’s cinematographer, Charlie Sarroff, demonstrates artists on the same page in absorbing us in a labyrinth of tension.

Like the short, Creswick, there’s a rustic and picturesque quality to Relic, given the rich attention to detail and colour palette. But not only visually, James has a deft ear for sounds that give us goosebumps. The sound design throughout is an essential part of creating those nervy textures of droning creaks and pitter-patters.

Relic, though, is a gritty take on the dynamics of three women of three generations. It just so happens to be painted over a horror canvas. But, oh, does that work well. Horror can come when we just simply turn the mirror on ourselves. Real delusion and actual nightmares cross paths were we perhaps can’t be sure what’s out there or inside of us.

That Kay, and then Sam, may be on the same path as Edna has fearsome connotations. Who isn’t afraid of growing old? Being all by ourselves? Feeling abandoned? It’s an exhaustion of the muscles and the mind that James perfectly captures within her familial friction and dysfunction. To tackle a tough subject like dementia, while adding a glossy coat to the horror genre is no mean feat.