Relic (2020)

GENERAL INFO:  

Director: Natalie Erika James

Studios: Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Nine Stories Productions, AGBO, Carver Films

Starring: Robyn Nevin, Emily Mortimer, Bella Heathcote

Tagline: Everything Decays

MPAA Rating: R 

Genre: horror, terror, family drama, psychological thriller, suspense, haunted house, foreign film

Scare score: B/ B+ 

Rating: A

Plot overview: After the elderly Edna (Nevin) inexplicably disappears for several days, her daughter Kay (Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Heathcote) return to the family home to help search for her. When she returns, the women are concerned for her health and mental state, but Edna's battle with dementia and the resulting strain on the family are even more horrifying than anybody could have predicted.

I had been hearing a lot about this movie online after it was released earlier this month, and I knew I had to see it. Needless to say, I was not disappointed by it in the least. I am not familiar with director Natalie Erika James's other work, but I expect to see more of it after this fantastic accomplishment that is her directorial debut.

Relic is beautifully dark and haunting. At its core, it is the story of family—more specifically, the intergenerational story of women, as well as the bonds and burdens they carry. I have been loving this turn towards domestic dramas in recent horror (The Babadook, Hereditary). Before we even consider the more 'supernatural' or ghostly elements of the movie, we must face the horror of what is really happening: A matriarch lost in her battle with a rapidly progressing dementia and the unraveling of a family that follows. In many ways, the more thrilling and terrifying horror that enters towards the end of the movie is a welcome distraction from the film's true terror, one that many of us have and many of us will face.

I cannot speak for Australia, but in the United States we are victims and perpetrators of a death-denying culture. Across the nation but especially in cities and large towns, we hide away senior citizens in homes, communities, and developments specifically designed for older folks to the point that many of us do not regularly see them in our day-to-day lives (think about the scene in this film when Kat is showed the room at the nursing home with an "ocean view"). The devastating health effects of such isolation on these individuals has been proven to kill. We praise youth and vitality in media, fashion, and technology, we push rejuvenating lotions and creams to give the appearance of being younger, we thrive on surgeries and procedures to wipe away the years from our faces and bodies, we do not talk adequately about aging and dying, and we certainly don't support our older citizens when it comes to caring for their health and dignity.

Cognitive decline, especially a rapidly progressing dementia, is among the greatest unspoken horrors in our individualistic and youth-worshipping society. If you or a loved one have ever experienced it, you may be familiar with the pain, suffering, and loss that comes with watching a grown, capable, and once-independent adult start falling apart from the inside out. It is slow death, it is change, it is metamorphosis. Enter Relic.

This movie beautifully blends human suffering with a psychological thriller that drifts into audience-pleasing horror with ease. Although this original shift felt somewhat clunky for a second, I found myself accepting the twist and allowing myself to go along for the ride that is this movie's third act. I read in one interview that the producers (including Jake Gyllenhaal) had called for more terror in the finale, but I am happy that it remained fairly subdued in a more bizarre way that may not please every viewer but which I think will remain very memorable. Perhaps my favorite thing about this film was the way it blended Eastern and Western horror in a deeply personal way, as director James is Japanese-Australian and also had a grandmother with severe dementia. This largely presents vis a vis the supernatural feel of legacy around the home, which ends up straddling the line between haunted house/ malevolent entity as an allegory for familial drama and history (think The Grudge or even Crimson Peak).

*SPOILER ALERT*

The title holds multiple meanings in the film. First and foremost is the idea of age and decline, with older folks turning into relics compared to younger generations, or simply as relics of their former selves. This ties into the films shocking ending, where Kay peels away Edna's skin to reveal an ancient-looking creature, a true relic of the supernatural. Lastly, and perhaps my favorite, there is the octagonal window in Edna's front door that was taken from Kay's great-grandfather's cabin on the property after his death. In the realm of haunted houses or Japanese-style horror, we can imagine this relic as being the source of the rot consuming Edna's home (AKA the decay destroying the family), or simply a reminder of past transgressions, specifically the family's neglect of the old man before and certainly after his death.

How did you interpret the film? After it ended, I found myself very happy with the experience but also very confused, and even after a second watch I was still exciting to explore the many avenues of interpretation this film can have. On the binary, I think we can understand the events of the movie as purely plausible or purely supernatural. The former—and I think the most likely—is simply that Kay and Sam return to Edna's home to look for her after she has gone missing, and then struggle to decide how to care for her once she returns. The state of her dementia is so bad—and at times disturbing and violent—that the younger women begin to see their own relationship tested, and perhaps their own judgment questioned. This movie does a fantastic job of playing with the characters and the audience, flipping the mother-daughter (or parent-child) dynamic on its head (Edna forcing Kay to check under the bed for monsters), and heightening the tension and competition between the characters (Sam being gifted her grandmother's ring; Kay finding her school progress reports tossed in the garbage; Edna thinking Kay and Sam are conspiring against her). The woman-centric human drama is excellent.

In the second scenario, the house and family are being haunted by a supernatural decay stemming from the death of Kay's great-grandfather. The entity has begun taking over the house and has likely infiltrated Edna by the time of her return, even replacing her completely. Going a step further, a portal of sorts has been opened in the house that connects it to a much more sinister version of itself that traps its victims inside as the house closes in around them.

My preferred interpretation is somewhere in between. I think that this is mostly a story of human suffering and of cognitive and relational change/loss. Edna's battle with dementia means that she sometimes 'changes' and becomes forgetful, confused, suspicious, or irritated. This is challenging for her daughter and granddaughter, who suffer silently in witnessing these lapses and do not agree on the best way to care for Edna. As tensions heighten and Edna worsens, the women experience the full terror of this metamorphosis, themselves becoming engulfed in the disease and the house that Edna herself has described as feeling less familiar and somehow bigger (in her late husband's absence). Naturally, this explanation does not fully cover the breadth of Sam first finding herself trapped in the nightmarish labyrinth between the walls of the house, nor does it fully account for the final scenes of the film. I enjoyed the pursuit through the maze because of the level of more accessible horror it brought to the film. As for the ending, I think this can be seen several ways simultaneously: Kay's decision to put her own interests/ fears aside and care for her mother (thus correcting the family's neglect of her great-grandfather); Kay and Sam's choice to cope with Edna's disease/ struggle; the completion of Edna's "transformation" through cognitive degeneration (loss of former self; shell of her former self); foreshadowing of dementia's genetic components as Sam sees the same rot on her mother's back. Will this be all of their fates?

Story aside, the acting in the film is not only strong but enjoyable. I was just rewatching Match Point the other week and was wondering about Emily Mortimer— I wasn't expecting to see her starring in a new horror film! I found Robyn Nevin great in the role of Edna, there was something imposing and silently scary about her. I especially thought Bella Heathcote was great as Sam, maybe because she is actually permitted some depth when moving between frustration, compassion, and terror. I was very surprised by the look of the movie, especially when it takes its more supernatural turn towards the end and the walls and floors start twisting and stop making sense. Some of the eerier scenes that stick out to me are the sequence of Kat following her mom into the woods (the photo album), Sam witnessing the innocuous and horrifying progression of Post-It notes, and Edna's skin in general. 

Final critique: Simultaneously subdued and psychologically thrilling, Relic is raw, beautiful, female-centric horror. With notes similar to The Grudge, The Pact, The Babadook, and even Absentia, this movie is filled with a certain hazy kind of dread that sharpens into terrifying clarity at several climaxes throughout the film. Like to leave many audience members scratching their heads (or avoiding scratching their skin at all costs), Relic is a refreshing debut from director Natalie Erika James, and this blogger looks forward to seeing more.

Hostel (2005)

GENERAL INFO:
Director: Eli Roth
Studios: Next Entertainment, Raw Nerve, Lionsgate, Screen Gems
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eypór Gu∂jónsson
Tagline: Welcome To Your Worst Nightmare.
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: horror, thriller, psychological horror, body horror, torture, drama
Scare score: C+/B-
Rating: B+

Plot overview: Three friends are traveling Europe in search of forgettable girls and unforgettable adventure. When they're promised the best parties and hottest women, they travel farther east on their hunt for hookups. When they arrive to Slovakia, however, they unwillingly wind up in an international scheme where they become the hunted.

Who hasn't seen or heard of Hostel? This was released a year after Saw and in many ways the two films heralded in a new era of body horror and, more specifically, torture porn, which I feel many modern audiences most heavily associate with the horror genre today. Eli Roth made a name for himself several years earlier with the enjoyably bloody Cabin Fever— a movie which perhaps better bridges the gap from early 2000s horror into more body-centric terror. I would argue it's also no coincidence that the teen comedy EuroTrip was released in 2004, because in many ways Hostel is a perverted and nightmarish version of that film, complete with Josh (Richardson) moping over an ex-girlfriend, Amsterdam nightclubs, feisty strangers on a train, and winding up in Bratislava. Tell me that's a coincidence. Which leads me to my next point...

Above all else, Hostel is an exploration of the role of America (and Americans) in a post-9/11 world. The Bush era was a time when American backpackers were not welcome many places, when Americans abroad posed as Canadians to avoid the recently-marred reputation on the world stage. While it exploits some of the stereotypically obtuse nature of American tourists, it also serves as a commentary of American violence when we meet the fantastically creepy Rick Hoffman as the American client later in the film. In general, setting the majority of the film in an impoverished and third-world-looking version of the Slovakian capital of Bratislava drew major backlash from government and audiences in that country, which went on to invite Roth for an all-expenses-paid trip to show him their true beauty and culture. Roth explained that the film was not meant as an insult to the country or its people, but rather to make a point that most Americans wouldn't know Slovakia was a country, or at least that they wouldn't be able to place it on a map. While our main characters are fairly bright, this ignorance and the ensuing loss of innocence are explored in the film.

It's not a coincidence that the victims we see explicitly in the film are American and Japanese, or that German plays a large role, because I feel that this, too, is a commentary on power: Taking citizens of the world's most powerful and industrialized nations and subverting them into victims in a nightmarish pay-per-victim business in what is clearly portrayed as a developing country. Since the Cold War, Eastern Europe has long been viewed in the American imagination as some broken down and eternally foreign place lost in the past. I can see how this film certainly would have perpetuated those feelings. A major moment in the film comes when the formerly cocky and ignorant Paxton (Hernandez) begins speaking in fluent German to his torturer, thus tapping into the masked butcher's humane side and allowing Paxton to buy himself some more time to formulate a plan. To me, this represented the importance of culture and multicultural/ multilingual education as a path to salvation for Americans, who are stereotypically monolingual and ignorant of cultures other than their own state/ city/ family.

I really enjoy this film. I remember the first time I rented it with a friend back in high school and we just sat there half laughing half terrified at what was happening before us. The first half of the movie plays almost as an adult film until we are ushered into a dark transition. I absolutely adore the juxtaposition of these young men looking for sex and speaking poorly of sex workers, only to then find themselves as the meat or merchandise being sold to wealthy international clients. Natalya (Barbara Nedeljáková) explicitly points this out with a great line to Paxton later on: "I get a lot of money for you, and that makes you my bitch." There is something so crucial to the genre about this subversion of independence and agency into total obedience— and then enter the body horror as their physical forms get slowly mutilated. I think that is what differentiates body horror from splatter films: There is a larger focus on the physical mutilation than simply on the bodily fluids to follow. Hostel offers plenty of that as well, and if there was one scene most representative of the movie, it would probably be the infamous bit with the eyeball. Another great sequence is when Paxton is being dragged past the doors of different rooms in the factory (why are the doors open?) and we get brief glimpses into various snapshots of torture. My favorite scene may have been when Paxton is in his torture room and his vomit starts erupting around the ball gag that has just been put into his mouth. So excellent.

Another interesting theme the movie touches on not-so-shyly is that of a gay subtext. I recently listened to the Hostel episode of the usually fun and insightful Horror Queers podcast that brought this back to my attention since I had not seen the movie in years. Going back to American relations, I think another major stereotype/ reality we have is that European men are more "feminine," as we have come to understand that word in Western societies, meaning they are more openly sensual or comfortable with their bodies or in expressing themselves. Óli (Gu∂jónsson) shows off his butt more times than I can count and is openly interested in heterosexual couples copulating, as well as other kinks. Horror movies in the early 2000s are usually ripe with overt homophobia, and Hostel is no different. Our three brochachos are galavanting around Europe looking for "poosay," and it's primarily Josh who becomes a target for Paxton and Óli's homophobic remarks regarding Josh's use of a fanny pack (trendsetter!) or his reluctance to try and sleep with every single girl they encounter. One of the most interesting bits from the film is when the Dutch Businessman (Jan Vlasák) places his hand on Josh's thigh during the train ride, and Josh immediately freaks out. When they meet each other again, Josh tries to atone for his outburst by buying the businessman a drink at a bar, and he reciprocates the man's original gesture by placing his own hand on the man's thigh. This prompts the man to admit that he had to ignore his urges and start a family, but that Josh still has time to do what is right for him. There is really no other way to read this except that the man is admitting he is not heterosexual, but was forced into a heteronormative lifestyle, and that he acknowledges homosexual feelings in Josh and wants the adolescent to follow his own path (AKA telling Josh 'Gay is okay.') Josh seems confused by this exchange, and we don't really see too much more of it because at that point it's already too late for him anyway. While Paxton starts off the film as a pretty unrepentant homophobe, part of his arc is to get more in touch with his feelings as becomes more human and tries to survive his ordeal. The idea of these men tied up and made subservient is one aspect of that, as well as some of the general torture/ BDSM equipment we see in the factory, including the ball gag used on Paxton. At the end of the film, the bathroom kill scene is also heavy on the gay allusions as cruising in bathrooms was historically (and still remains) a way to rendezvous with or meet other men. (We have seen this touched upon in other horror movies, such as the 2007 Halloween remake or even the latest installment from 2018.)

In general, I think the acting is pretty solid in this movie, more so in specific scenes than in general. I do like the hunky Hernandez as our final boy Paxton— bet you didn't see that coming when the movie started. Surviving the ordeal becomes fairly ridiculous, especially when he's an inch away from escape and hears screams coming from inside the factory (how?), triggering him to rescue Kana (Jennifer Lim) as redemption for the little girl he didn't stop from drowning in that minor backstory you might have missed in the first place. Facing the trauma of the moment, it's wild that his brain even allowed him to process that, whereas most of us would be in full-on flight, fight, or freeze. I feel so-so about Derek Richardson as the more empathetic Josh, but he has perhaps the biggest standout moment of the movie when he first comes to in his torture cell. This is our first introduction to the reality of the movie as well, and his realization/ begging for mercy/ suffering is one of the best sequences in the entire film.

Overall, this movie is not very scary. Violence and gore are very separate from actual scares to me, so while they are certainly heavy in those departments, the film itself is more terrifying psychologically in the reality of what is happening with the Elite Hunting organization. That name also cracked me up, what with an ego-boosting suggestion that these butchers were "hunters," when in reality their prey is being handed to them. Maybe some commentary on big game hunting there as well. The first half of the movie is all setting us up for the second half, and there is really very little horror in the beginning at all, which is interesting. A few scenes end up fairly silly, like the most dramatic low-speed hit and run we've ever witnessed (RIP Eastern European accomplices) or that other classic scene on the train platform at the end. (AMAZING blood splatter on random women. LOVE that.) The movie also ends on a really weird note, I was almost surprised that that was it.

I also picked up on some great Shining references throughout the movie, from the presence of the number 237, to the camera angles approaching the factory (similar to approaching the Overlook), even to the string-heavy music in some scenes. That was fun to see throughout. The music, however, is pretty corny, and I think that hurts the scares in otherwise dark scenes. There is a great soundtrack in the beginning of the movie, but by the time the terror kicks in, the score sounds very outdated and overdramatic. Was a bit turned off by that as well.

Final critique: This movie is a wild ride that many audiences are sure to enjoy. This came early on in the years of modern body horror and torture porn, with just a few explicit scenes but plenty of special effects, makeup, props, and bodily fluids to add to the overall feel. If you can't do gore, there is no reason why you should even attempt this movie. Otherwise, it's quirky in its own ways, but mostly a quick and enjoyable watch with plenty of deeper subtexts that helped boost Eli Roth to major fame in the genre.