Relic Review

Horror is a genre that is uniquely poised to examine complex issues through a different lens than other mediums, using allegory and fear to explore the anxieties and flaws of our society. In recent years, more and more horror films have been taking on this task, with studios like A24 reinvigorating the intelligent independent horror film and directors like Robert Eggers, Ari Aster and Jordan Peele breathing new life into the genre. One of the most common manifestations of this new wave of horror is to use supernatural manifestations as a metaphor for mental illness - see The Babadook and Lights Out as two examples.

While there are ways to do this well, there is a general feeling that I get from watching a lot of these types of movies that this is the only way that people know how to tell important stories within the horror genre, and as such the method is becoming tired. Furthermore, in order for this to succeed, the film needs needs the victim of the affliction the supernatural is an alegory for with empathy and humanity. The Babadook humanizes its characters, and is ultimately a story with a message of awareness and empowerment. Lights Out, on the other hand, treats the victim as another part of the haunting, a part of the horror, and is ultimately dehumanizing.

Relic is another arthouse-esque horror film that uses the supernatural allegorically, and unfortunately, it falls into the latter category. Its exploration of Alzheimer's and the isolation and abandonment of the elderly have the possibility of being profound, but it is ultimately squandered on a narrative that focuses on onlookers and family members' feelings of horror and concern as the entity haunting the house slowly takes control over their grandmother, replacing her with someone else, someone strange and malicious. As much as it tries to be empathetic, it still treats the woman as part of the horror, and in the end it becomes just another dehumanizing portrayal of mental illness as something dangerous to be feared.

The frustrating thing about Relic is that there is a good movie buried somewhere within it. The atmosphere is palpable and there are some haunting images. The dream sequences, while somewhat hamfisted, are still well constructed and chilling. There are moments of legitimate power, such as a scene where the protagonist's elderly, afflicted mother, Edna, breaks down asking where "everyone" is, presumably referring to all of the people she's lost throughout her life, as if she's realizing they're gone all over again. The protagonist, Kay, goes through an arc of grief and acceptance, coming to terms with her mother's decline while also realizing that she should have been there for her more, and she shouldn't have brushed her off and left her alone.

The scariest, and by far the best, part of the movie comes when Kay's daughter, Sam, decides to explore a locked closet that her grandmother is convinced is the source of the supernatural presence in the house. It's a walk in closet, and in the back, a shelf can be pushed aside to reveal another hallway. Upon exploring this, Sam finds herself trapped in a maze of increasingly decrepit hallways and locked doors. The passages are stuffed with clutter and boxes, and the walls are covered in post it notes written by Edna as reminders to herself. The layout doesn't make any sense in relation to the rest of the house, and shouldn't exist at all, and seems to constantly change to make it harder and harder to escape without literally breaking through the walls.

Clearly, this was meant to represent the decay of cognitive ability that manifests in Alzheimer's patients, as the surrounding environment becomes more and more alien to them and they have a harder and harder time remembering how to navigate it, where things are, what they're even doing here in the first place. There's a much better film to be made here, where an elderly woman, alone and isolated after the deaths of her husband and father and the abandonment by the rest of her family, is forced to grapple with this loneliness while her mental state declines, represented by the discovery of this impossible non-euclidean architecture within her house - and whatever malicious presence is creating it. This would be a truly unique and powerful story that generates empathy and humanizes the character - and it would also play towards my personal affinity for horror stories about impossible spaces.

What we get instead is another half-baked haunted house story with little meat on its bones. The threat is vague and amorphous, and despite its efforts to humanize Edna and comment on the isolation and abandonment the elderly face, she is turned into an extension of the horror. In the end, she forgets who her family is entirely as the entity - whatever it is - takes over, and she attacks them, becoming a danger to herself and everyone else. Her body begins to decay and fall apart, and the audience is squarely placed outside of her mind, scared of her instead of for her. In a world where we already neglect and dismiss the concerns of the elderly in very dehumanizing ways, Relic, despite its attempts to the contrary, is part of the problem.

Relic is a well meaning film with a lot of good going for it, but in its attempts to fit in with the generational horror trend alongside films like Hereditary, as well as the "haunted house as a metaphor for mental illness" archetype, it loses grip on what it was trying to be in the first place. It picks all of the wrong things to focus on, when the most interesting parts of its story are left nearly as underdeveloped as the central haunting. With a few rewrites, it could have been the next big thing in horror, but instead of blazing its own trail, it misses its mark and is added to the list of films that simply coast along in the wake of its more impactful predecessors, forever missing what made them so great.