WatchSeeLookView At The LFF 2020 - Relic

One of the few full-on “cult” efforts showing at the fest this year - who doesn’t like a bit of horror? (Well, yeah, lots of people, I know, but you get what I was doing there as an opener anyway.)

Relic
Dir. Natalie Erika James / Dur. 89 mins
Strand:- Cult

In A Nutshell:- A woman and her daughter travel back to the family home when her mother goes missing…

The Good:- There’s been a resurgence in a more thoughtful strand of horror in recent years; the sort of horror that relies on a creeping and building sense of unease and disquiet rather than gore and jump scares and that’s no bad thing*. Relic is very much in the vein of films like Hereditary and The Babadook - the scares come from preying on fears of loneliness, grief, etc. - in Relic’s case, it’s the fear of old age robbing us of who we are. There’s an effective building of tension and some suitably creepy imagery throughout to build the disquiet and Emily Mortimer, Robyn Niven and Bella Heathcote all give affecting performances as the three generations of the family trapped in this escalating situation. There are some nicely disconcerting and claustrophobic scenes involving the house itself later in the film.

The Bad:- There’s a slight lack of focus and clarity in the nature of the threat itself. Without wanting to say too much, there are appearances and sightings of something that don’t seem to fully pay off, with the emphasis on the horror of ageing itself leading to a feeling that some of the sequences are red herrings for the sake of injecting some more traditional horror scares into the film (maybe I missed something though). It’s a minor complaint though overall.

The Verdict:- Another string entry in the current crop of more thoughtful and reflective horror films that seem to have cropped up in the last five to ten years. A few unfocussed moments don’t detract from what is effectively upsetting film. I for one am happy to keep horror films that are at least trying to do something outside of the traditional horror formula



*I’m not saying that I don’t like a gory horror film with plenty of jump scares but they have to be done well and preferably with humour too. Gore for gore's sake doesn't appeal - I’ll take an Evil Dead 2 over a Hostel any day of the week.