Feature Story Haunting tale
A unique Australian horror story, Relic took Sundance by storm and now it’s bringing its chills directly to your home on Stan, writes Emily Colston
G etting old can be pretty scary. But it’s never been more frightening than it is in Japanese-Australian Natalie Erika James’ debut feature Relic.
Starring Emily Mortimer
(The Newsroom), Robyn Nevin (Upper Middle Bogan) and
Bella Heathcote (Bloom) as three generations of women from the same family, it is, as far as anyone can figure, the first horror movie to take its inspiration from the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.
When family matriarch
Edna (Nevin) goes missing from the remote family home in the Victorian countryside, daughter Kay (Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Heathcote) head out there to try and find her.
There, they find clues as to her increasing dementia, but when Edna suddenly reappears, she is a much-changed woman. How much of that is the Alzheimer’s, and how much is something more sinister?
“It’s a brilliant genre movie, but it transcends the genre, like one of the great horror films,” Mortimer said in a recent interview.
“To me, it felt like (James) had used the genre to help explore a really horrifying part of real life, which is very underexplored in our culture.”
The story is a personal one for writer, director and producer James, who was inspired by her own grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s.
“A lot of the film comes from my observations of her deterioration and her changing relationship with my mother,” she told journalists recently.
“I went to Japan to visit her, and it was the first time she couldn’t remember who I was. There were a lot of feelings of guilt about not having gone to see her earlier.
Waking nightmare: Kay (Emily Mortimer) heads to the country to search for her mother in Relic.
“And she also lived in this really creepy traditional Japanese house. So I think the combination of those two things kind of started off the whole thing.”
Both star and creator are keen to emphasise that this is not your standard jump-scares flick – the drama is just as important as the frights.
“If there’s no underlying thematic drive that relates to the horrors of real life or a real emotional truth, it doesn’t really interest me,” James said.
“The drama is just as important as the horror. Psychological horror feels the most apt. It’s not a traditional, all-out horror film.
“It’s a story about the heartbreak and tragedy of ageing and Alzheimer’s and the shifting dynamics between parent and child as people age.”
Mortimer, who admits she’s not a fan of the horror genre, agreed. “This I felt like it just happened to be horror film but really it was a film about people and relationships and death and
it was just so brilliantly done.” James’ hope is that taking this approach will help her audience connect with the ideas she is trying to present, and help them process their own dementia demons.
“I think having to confront your parents’ mortality – and your own by extension – is such a scary but universal concept. There’s a specific tortuous quality to Alzheimer’s and watching someone decline in its clutches,” James said.
“If there’s one person in the audience who watches the film and it resonates with them on a level that helps them process their experience with the disease, I’ll feel like I’ve achieved what I set out to do.”
Relic, now available on Stan
Natalie Erika James: It’s a story about the heartbreak and tragedy of ageing and Alzheimer’s and the shifting dynamics between parent and child as people age.