RELIC, EDGE,
Emily Mortimer finds ‘Relic’ real, scary
Death hovers over “Relic,” an Australian horror house entry with Emily Mortimer as one very troubled daughter. The London-born, Brooklynbased actress has an eclectic resume with thrillers (“Transsiberian”), a musical (“Mary Poppins Returns”) and horror (“Scream 3”).
What made “Relic” irresistible, she said last week from London where she was visiting family, was its ending.
“A relic is some kind of religious object, the skin or hair of a saint — or something like that. It’s a reference to what lives on after death,” Mortimer, 48, began.
“I guess it refers to the end of the movie. This woman” — her dementia-riddled mother — “is departing the world and she is leaving strips of her body before she goes. By the end of the movie there is that sequence, a cathartic, almost ritualistic, quite a religious feeling.”
Mortimer’s Kay is the dutiful daughter who has brought her own teenage daughter (Bella Heathcote) along to find out what’s happened to Grandma, who has disappeared.
As the old woman mysteriously returns, these three generations of women are even more intensely connected as death nears and the grandmother’s house strangely morphs to reflect her decline.
“On one level it could be seen as a haunted house movie,” Mortimer said. “For me what’s great about the film is that it’s the genre film that transcends its genre.
“I’m very proud of Natalie (Erika James), the director, who has managed to make a movie that really resonates as a great drama.
“When you lose someone you love and you see them die, it’s much more horrifying and scary than anything that’s going to happen in a film. It’s really odd as well.
“Physically what happens to people when they die I think is very, very weird and scary. And also beautiful at times.
“I think Natalie’s captured something about that. About how difficult it is to look after your parents as they die, and how confusing it is and how you feel so guilty and also kind of infuriated at times and scared at other times.
“I think she’s captured a lot of very truthful emotions with the movie that make it more than just a haunted house horror film.
“But I also think it gives you all the scares and frights and this crazy entertainment ‘ride’ you’d want in a horror movie — but it also transcends its genre. Which is the genius of the movie.”