Relic (2020)

This Australian picture is good at setting a mood and sustaining it but unfortunately can't make up its mind about two separate directions: a sensitive movie about aging and dementia on the one hand and a big ol' scary horror show on the other. Most of us already know one way or another—it's intuitive—that aging is its own horror show (like so many aspects of living as the better alternative to dying). Michael Haneke seemed almost gauche when he noticed this about aging with his gimlet eye in Amour. Relic starts with the disappearance of Edna (Robyn Nevin), who has been missing for days. People turn out to search the woods for her. She's a woman in her 80s who has been forgetful lately and it doesn't look good. Then one day after a week or so she's back again, with no explanations about where she was—won't even talk about it. Her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) traveled to be in on the search and now they decide to stick around. All relationships are wary, tentative, and distant, but the bonds plainly run deep too. They're not really a happy family but we know their unhappiness. And now at long last is the old lady losing it? Well, possibly, these things happen, but then instead the movie develops a fascination with the house. Noises are heard beyond the walls—literally things that go bump in the night. More and more Relic becomes a story about the irrational space inside that house—that's where Edna went, apparently, and Sam spends some time there too. There's some mumbo-jumbo backstory about an older house on the property that was destroyed but its windows kept for the present house. A mistake, possibly. Portals, in short, maybe. After a few cycles of that we land again on the angst and unease of aging and constant peekaboo about dementia—is Edna losing it or isn't she? How sad if she is! Inquiring minds want to know but Edna wants inquiring minds to leave her alone. I think, out of this elegantly mounted mess, the better movie is the one about aging and dementia, but even the horror story would be better without the aging and dementia notes. So Relic for me was not really a win-win.