Relic: A Film as Bewildering as Its Subject

Warning: Spoilers!

Natalie Erika James’s first feature debut attempts to bring to life the “monster” that is dementia. Though the film was technically crafted very well and I really wanted to like it, the overall story and its metaphors ultimately clarified nothing and lead me into greater confusion.

Lost

Kay (Emily Mortimer) receives a call from her mother Edna’s (Robyn Nevin) neighbor, asking if she knows where Edna is. Since Kay hasn’t spoken to Edna in a while, she and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) decide to go to her house and check in on her.

Upon arrival, the house is in disarray. Nothing has been fixed or cleaned in a while and there is no sign of Edna. Kay and Sam notice random sticky notes around the house that Edna has left for herself to remind herself of various things she needs to do.

Kay and Sam decide to stay in the house and look for Edna. When they don’t find her in the house or on the property, Kay goes to the police and they begin an unsuccessful group search for her. When Edna magically reappears in her kitchen, she cannot tell Kay where she was, either because she can’t remember or she simply doesn’t want to.

Kay becomes very concerned with her mother’s ailing mind and health and decides that Edna may need more one on one care that she simply can’t deliver full time. When Sam finds out that Kay is looking to put Edna into an assisted living facility, she tells Edna and Kay that she will become Edna’s caretaker.

Source: IFC Midnight

Dazed in The Maze

Kay has a couple of disturbing dreams about her great grandfather and the small hut outside the house where he once lived. He too died from dementia and Kay is unwilling to face the “rot” that is slowly consuming her family members.

Meanwhile, Sam talks to Edna’s neighbors Alex (Jeremy Stanford) and his son Jamie (Chris Bunton) to try and figure out the mystery of what was happening in the house. All that Alex can report is that he stopped allowing Jamie to visit Edna because Edna had (accidently?) locked Jamie in her closet and forgot him there.

Both Sam and Kay have already experienced a lot of unexplained thumps in the walls and other strange happenings in the house, so Sam decides to investigate Edna’s closet more closely. Sure enough, Alex’s story checks out as there are still scratch marks inside the closet door, where Jamie was trying to get out.

As Sam approaches the back of the closet, she finds that it leads her into a living labyrinth within the walls and she becomes trapped seemingly by the house itself. When Kay follows Edna into the closet, she too falls victim to the house. Kay and Sam then must work together to get out of the “endless” maze, all while being pursued by Edna, who is quickly decompensating and decomposing into the “monster” inside of her.

Will Kay and Sam be able to save Edna from this vicious illness or will they, too, fall prey to it?

In All Honesty…

Source: IFC Midnight

I have questions. Lots of them.

First and foremost, why does the one character with a disability, Jamie, represented by an actual person with a disability, yet portraying a character where the role finally isn’t all about their disability, have to be called a “retard”. I get that Edna is decompensating, but there are ample words and phrases to insult someone without it being about their disability. It is irresponsible and there is no excuse for that when people with disabilities are actively fighting for proper representation in all aspects of film and television as it is.

It appears that James attempted to make the dementia a living embodiment. But is its physicality the house or is it the mysterious dark figure we see from time to time?

If the house and its labyrinth of walls within the closet is a metaphor for the confusion and terror that dementia wraps the victim and their family members in, then is the labyrinth supposed to technically be a representation of Edna’s mind? If so and she “gets lost” within it, that wouldn’t warrant police presence, reports or a physical search outside the house. She’s still lost in “the house”.

How, also, does Sam physically get lost in Edna’s metaphor, three dimensional or not? She is not in Edna’s mind ever, so would be unable to experience that confusion literally or metaphorically. She could only attempt to understand Edna’s turmoil from the outside. Therefore, the closet should’ve remained locked to her and the terror should’ve manifested itself to her and Kay differently.

The “monster” rots the entire house and the physical skin of Edna as it takes over, but how does an outside person, like the visiting doctor (Catherine Glavicic), who isn’t part of any of this, also physically see the decay on Edna’s skin? Clearly she would understand the “decay” of dementia, but if this was a familial, living, 3D metaphor, no one else but the family should be able to see the physical manifestations.

Source: IFC Midnight

As much as this film attempts to become the new The Babadook, it fails to accomplish being a stand alone film, beyond the metaphor, like The Babadook did. The Babadook creature is a physical manifestation for the mother’s depression but no one except she and her son can see or hear it. That makes sense because her depression affects them the most. Even without considering all of its metaphors, the creature haunting them is terrifying enough, with the film’s craftily planned scares, to be a stand alone horror film.

The most horrifying part of Relic is it’s script, or possibly it is just the way the final cut was edited. Either way, it relies too heavily on metaphor that is not expertly mapped out to be considered a stand alone, enjoyable film of any genre. Metaphor should serve the film, not try to be the film.

The “scares”, all throughout, were paltry and ho hum. Though it seemed James had something truly unique in the labyrinth scene that lead me to believe that there would be a shocking, breath taking crescendo, it ultimately didn’t pay off and the film deflated like a flatulent balloon.

I wish the script/the way the film was put together, had complimented and partnered with Charlie Saroff’s elegant cinematography and the rest of the film’s technical beauty, but it unfortunately got lost and fell flat within its own demented obscurity.

This is not a horror film, nor is it a drama. It seemed Relic’s own foundations were much too shaky and unclear to materialize into a solid piece in and of itself. Perhaps I simply didn’t “get it”, and, if so, that still falls upon the film’s creators to get their message through in some cohesive way.

It left me feeling disappointed and as confused as it’s subject.

Relic opens for streaming and VOD on July 10, 2020