Horror is often the perfect vehicle to use as a metaphor for uncomfortable, controversial, or deeply personal topics. In Relic, the feature debut by Natalie Erika James, horror is used as a metaphor for dementia. Of the overwhelming confusion and isolation that dementia brings. James reimagines the illness as a haunted house horror film. The metaphor might be too on the nose, but her chilling feature debut unnerves, shocks, and emotionally devastates with bone-chilling ease.

When elderly Edna (Robin Nevyn) goes missing, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) return to the rural family home to find her. While they enlist the help of authorities and scour the house for clues to her whereabouts, Kay and Sam find evidence of dementia everywhere. Post-it note reminders to complete mundane tasks like flushing the toilet, signs of paranoia in the form of new deadbolt locks, and indicators that Edna’s hygiene isn’t what it should be. After three days missing, Edna mysteriously reappears and refuses to say a word about where she’s been. Growing increasingly volatile, Kay and Sam begin to suspect a much more ominous presence lurking within the home and taking control of Edna.

Bella Heathcote appears in Relic by Natalie Erika James, an official selection of the Midnight program at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jackson Finter.

The family home is the picture-perfect haunted house. It’s very old, surrounded by woods, and in the early stages of disrepair. The floors creak, and shadows thrive in the twisty corridors of the house, especially at night. Mold begins to invade the walls and floors. Edna’s behavior is unsettling enough; sometimes, she’s sharp-witted and lucid, and other moments her lucidity lapses into confused anger. Then she can be heard talking to herself, with glimpses of a shadowy figure. Is she being haunted by illness, or something much more supernaturally malicious? James, who co-wrote the film with Christian White, bides her time playing with the conventions of haunted house horror. When it feels as though it might become predictable, James keeps things interesting visually and with ominous sound design that keeps you unsure of where precisely the narrative is going.

And James saves the best for last. The final thirty minutes is a gnarly tour-de-force of intensity. Shocking surprises, sharp left turns into the grotesque, and nail-biting tension. In the film’s final moments, James deftly toggles between gruesome horror and emotionally devastating poignancy. That she can seamlessly shift between moods and tones so quickly and effectively is a remarkable feat.

There’s no subtext in this metaphor, not really. Relic features one seriously creepy house full of surprises, but it’s tethered by three generations of a family’s women struggling on how to process the deterioration of a loved one. Nevyn, Mortimer, and Heathcote bring profound depth to their characters, too. Horror used as an exploration for illness, loss, and what we inherit from our family isn’t new, but the way James approaches her subject matter feels fresh. What begins as a more straightforward yet psychological approach to haunted house fare explodes into full-blown horror in a wholly unexpected way, and Relic marks one audacious debut.

IFC Midnight brings Relic to digital/VOD platforms Friday, July 10th.

Editor’s Note: This Sundance review was originally published on January 27, 2020.