Pretty classic haunted house horror flick, slow paced, with the small addition of the main inhabitant being an old lady with beginning of dementia. This adds a little more interrogation in the beginning, is she talking to herself ? To someone/something that is here ? To the house ?
Characters are three generations women of the family, the grandmother, mother and daughter. There are some hints of weird relationships between them and the beginning of some plot, but it is never really developed or shown (the daughter always calling her mother by her name for instance).
It's interesting and worth the watch, however it's missing some connecting lines between the different elements. It starts by the disappearance of the grandmother, but it's not clear how it fits with the haunted house part. There is an actual haunted house portion with weird things happening but it's almost unrelated to the rest, but that part is very good, the looping corridor, the extended part of the house inside the walls, the space getting tighter and tighter, it's a simple idea, but very oppressive and tense. There is some suggestion that it comes from parts of an older house, but that's just an allusion and never developed. In the same way the title is totally irrelevant.
The ending is probably best taken as a metaphor than literally, but then that does not fit with the weird house stuff. Otherwise, is the grandmother transforming into an actual monster, and what the fuck is wrong with her daughter to actually start peeling away all the skin and staying there ??
It feels a little unfinished, and not sure of the intended angle of the story.
Review by CoreyVIP 2BlockedParentSpoilers2021-02-01T07:56:41Z
3 Thoughts After Watching ‘Relic’:
Writing this before reading any comments or online explanations, I have :asterisk_symbol::asterisk_symbol:no:asterisk_symbol::asterisk_symbol: idea what just happened. Should I feel stupid right now? Guess I’m about to find out.
The communication in this family is horrendous. Let’s see a bunch of eerie shit the entire film and not mention it to one another.
There was a solid creep factor for most of the movie and I was waiting for an epic reveal. Only to get something disastrously ambiguous. The last 15 minutes slashed my rating a couple points.
Updated Thought: I’ve come to understand that the entire film is an allegory for Alzheimer’s. I can appreciate the use of a horror vehicle to explore something truly horrific, but — as a viewer — I couldn’t help but feel a little duped with the drastic left turn at the end, revealing the metaphor. It kinda reminds me of when I was super excited to see The Village, and was sorely disappointed to see it basically transition into an entirely different genre. There were elements of this film (i.e. seeing the monster under the bed or behind a character) that seemingly had nothing to do with the allegory and simply led you to believe it was a supernatural story. Duped. And, for me, dissatisfying. But I can see why others respect it.