In 2020, rave reviews flowed in from the Sundance Film Festival for Natalie Erika James’ directorial debut Relic. Rather than shock value, it achieves something far more challenging: frightening viewers while moving them to tears. The film portrays a life experience many families face: watching a loved one succumb to dementia, and it sadly hits home for many. Actor Emily Mortimer told the Los Angeles Times after reading the script, “I just felt, ‘Oh, this is really audacious and wonderful.’ I mean, I don’t think there’s anything more horrifying in life than watching someone you love die.”
The film affects viewers on multiple levels, leaving them disturbed by its imagery and devastated by its distressing truth. James looked to personal experiences to create Relic, drawing on her grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Through its three central female characters spanning three generations, this truly terrifying tearjerker from 2020 demonstrates how horror can tap into our most profound fears about mortality and loss.
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An Unusual Blend of Horror and Compassion
IFC Midnight
Relic leans into inherited trauma, aging and the sometimes suffocating nature of family bonds, with its supernatural elements founded in the uncomfortably intimate emotional reality of these things. Set in Australia, three women (a powerhouse trio of actors) grapple with dementia and family duties in a rural house after their grandmother, Edna (Robyn Nevin), briefly disappears. As her daughter Kay (Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) arrive to search, Edna returns just as inexplicably as she vanished, unable to explain her absence and exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior. Days pass and Edna’s condition deteriorates. She becomes paranoid and aggressive and occasionally doesn’t recognize her family.
Alongside these unsettling elements of dementia, strange phenomena begin occurring throughout the house: unexplained noises, shifting architecture, and black mold spreading across the walls, ql seeming like metaphoric manifestations of the dementia at the heart of Relic. Kay discovers hidden passages that shouldn’t exist and rooms that seem to change overnight. Family tensions surface as the house itself becomes increasingly labyrinthine and threatening, mirroring Edna’s mental state. Nearing the end, Kay and Sam confront a disturbing physical transformation in Edna that pushes the film into body horror territory, speaking to the harsh complexities that accompany end-of-life care.
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What Is ‘Elevated Horror’ Anyway?
Universal Pictures
Traditional horror relied perhaps too heavily on jump scares. Over the years, a new wave of films emerged, dubbed “elevated horror,” films which prioritized psychological depth, social commentary, and artistic flair. However, this classification has sparked debate within the industry. Many filmmakers and critics reject the label as a marketing construct that unfairly diminishes good, old-fashioned horror, suggesting these films are somehow elitist rather than celebrating that horror can evolve. As Mia Da Costa noted in Varsity, “The biggest issue with the term lies with its lack of a clear definition. There is no consensus on what qualifies as elevated horror and no authority to tell us what its defining traits are.”
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Films like Relic are grouped alongside Robert Eggers’ historical nightmare, The Witch (2015), Ari Aster’s grief-driven Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), and Jordan Peele’s racially charged Get Out (2017). While these works have received critical acclaim bordering on masterpiece status, it’s specifically the “elevated” qualifier that many industry insiders find problematic. Da Costa added: “Instead of trying to dress up the palatability of the genre, we should embrace its full spectrum — from slashers to psychological thrillers to experimental nightmares. Horror is horror, and that should be enough.”
Horror & Heartbreak in Relic
Rather than startling moments of surprise scares, Relic’s terror emerges from Robyn Nevin and the atmosphere, with the disorienting camera work and a darkened color palette matching Edna’s confused perspective. There’s an emotional connection to the viewer in its examination of caregiving, revealing the devastating complexities of dementia, where lucidity can suddenly give way to confusion and aggression. James taps into the resentment and grief that accompany watching a loved one deteriorate without judgment, knowing that love and frustration often coexist in caregiving relationships.
Visual metaphors enrich the storytelling: Edna stacking photo albums illustrate memory’s fragility; mysterious keys that no longer open doors suggest severed connections to the past; and bodies imprinted on surfaces show how we leave traces even as we disappear. The sound design heightens tension through subtle creaks and distant thumps, creating constant unease. Relic also captures the peculiar and very real grief of losing someone while they’re still physically present, witnessing someone you love morph into someone you no longer recognize.
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Horror Can Tap Into Our Buried Feelings
Upon its 2020 release, Relic earned critical acclaim for extracting tears through its terrifying premise. Critics praised the performances, with Robyn Nevin’s multifaceted portrayal of Edna standing out. As Sublime Horror reviewed: “Relic strives to represent the complexity of Edna’s battle with dementia – in some scenes, she is a passive victim, helpless and almost child-like; in others, she is aggressive and sharp-tongued. And in other scenes, she is just herself, the mother and grandmother that Kay and Sam remember.”
Supernatural elements amplify the real dread of cognitive decline: the fear of losing one’s identity, becoming unrecognizable to loved ones and witnessing transformation beyond anyone’s control. The horror genre continues to confront our deepest fears, as it should, and Relic is one of the most underrated recent explorations of this. Relic is available to rent or buy on the usual digital platforms and on demand, and you can check it out through AMC+ below:
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