RELIC (US/Australia - 2020) Directed by Natalie Erika James. Written by Natalie Erika James and Christian White. Cast: Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin, Bella Heathcote, Chris Bunton, Catherine Glavicic, Steve Rodgers, Jeremy Stanford. (R, 90 mins) It's easy to take a cursory glance at the poster for RELIC and assume it's a HEREDITARY knockoff. Indeed, it does belong in the same sort of "familial slow burn horror" subgenre, along with something like THE BABADOOK. But RELIC has more similarities to the minor cult film THE TAKING OF DEBORAH LOGAN, which used demonic possession as a metaphor for dementia with its aging title character. DEBORAH LOGAN had some interesting ideas and a couple of genuinely scary moments in its early-going, but once the focus shifted to the usual rote possession histrionics, it lost the thread and completely fell apart. RELIC manages its metaphorical implications with much more assurance, so much so that after all hell breaks loose in a third act that's unrelenting in intensity with its increasing sense of anxiety and claustrophobia, it ends with unexpected poignancy in a haunting final shot. It's a remarkably confident feature debut for US-born, Australia-based director/co-writer Natalie Erika James, who found some serious support for the project with backing from AGBO, the production company of the Marvel sibling team of Joe & Anthony Russo, along with Jake Gyllenhaal, who's credited as one of the producers.
Kay (Emily Mortimer) arrives from Melbourne with her university dropout daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) at the suburban home of her elderly mother Edna (Australian theater legend Robyn Nevin, probably best known to American audiences as Councillor Dillard in the MATRIX sequels), whose neighbors haven't seen her in several days. Widowed Edna is in her 80s and lives alone, and busy Kay hasn't spoken to her on the phone in several weeks. Kay and Sam arrive and immediately see things don't look right around the house. They're fully expecting to find her dead, bracing themselves as they check each room, but she's nowhere in the house. The house shows signs of disarray: fruit has rotted, Edna is putting food in a dish for a dog that died some time ago, a chair is facing the wrong way, and there are hastily-installed makeshift locks on all the doors. But she seems to be managing to a certain extent, even having the cognizance to leave Post-It notes with simple reminders like "Take pills." There appears to be some degree of hoarding, there's a concerning amount of black mold as a result of a flooding a year earlier when Edna left the bath water running, and there's an occasional, unexplained pounding in the walls. Sam puts on her grandmother's sweater and finds a scribbled note in the pocket reading "Don't follow it." After three days, Kay and Sam awake to the sound of a whistling tea kettle, and Edna is in the kitchen, showing some minor bruising on her chest and her legs and feet dirty, as if she's been outside the whole time. She insists nothing is wrong, but her mood is erratic, she resents Kay butting into her business, and she says she installed extra locks because "people have been in the house." She has moments where she's her old self and she's crystal clear, smiling and dancing with Sam, but that changes out of nowhere with rapidly increasing frequency, whether it's a cruel remark about Kay's divorce or when she sees Sam wearing a ring she'd given her a day earlier, but now angrily accuses her of stealing it and violently yanks it from her finger.
Anyone who's watched the decline of an aging loved one due to dementia will know first-hand the tragic horror of RELIC all too well, and James and co-writer Christian White nail the alternating feelings of anger, sadness, helplessness, and guilt that gradually begin to overwhelm Kay. The third act takes an unexpected turn that can't really be too extensively discussed without spoilers--the house becomes a tangible symbol of Edna's dementia, intent on keeping Kay and Sam from leaving--and it's something that could've easily been disastrous if not handled the right way. James does maybe pound the metaphor into your head one or two times more than is necessary to get the point, but her handling of the finale, the discovery of one final and heartbreaking Post-It note, the last moment of clarity when the inevitable is accepted, and what Sam sees in that moment, is an emotional wrecking ball and devastatingly real to anyone who knows that pain. When you think about the symbolism when the movie's over, you realize RELIC shouldn't work as well as it does, but it speaks to James' discipline and control--and the excellent work of the three stars--that it stays focused and doesn't fly off the rails. There's a mounting sense of dread throughout, with a subtle, omnipresent rumble in the sound design, and on a few fleeting occasions, you catch a quick glimpse of something, a dark figure deep in the background, lingering at the very edge of the frame. There is something in the house, and James wisely avoids the tired genre tropes, as when Edna insists there's something under her bed and tells a dismissive, annoyed Kay to look. She does and what's there is presented in a far more unsettling fashion than any jump scare.
Bella Heathcote, director/co-writer Natalie Erika James,
Robyn Nevin and Emily Mortimer at Sundance in January 2020
THE NEON DEMON (France/US/Denmark - 2016) Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Written by Nicolas Winding Refn, Mary Laws and Polly Stenham. Cast: Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Desmond Harrington, Alessandro Nivola, Charles Baker, Jamie Clayton, Stacey Danger. (R, 118 mins) With his latest film THE NEON DEMON, DRIVE director and cult filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is aspiring to be the same kind of poking-with-a-stick provocateur as his fellow Danish countryman Lars von Trier. Refn's last film, 2013's hypnotic and hyper-stylized masterpiece ONLY GOD FORGIVES (infamously booed at Cannes, which is essentially a badge of honor, if not the entire endgame to guys like Refn and von Trier) is a key influence here, at least in terms of the throbbing synth score by Cliff Martinez, the obsessive perfectionism of the Kubrickian shot composition, and the red and blue Dario Argento colorgasms. But THE NEON DEMON is Refn's worst film, a huge disappointment that looks like the equivalent of an ONLY GOD FORGIVES B-side, with the visual and aural elements crammed into a puerile, simplistic, and embarrassingly heavy-handed metaphorical allegory that's part supernatural spin on BLACK SWAN and part good vs. evil lecture on whatever it takes to get ahead in the Los Angeles modeling world. One senses around 3/4 of the way through that it's all a goof to amuse Refn, no doubt chuckling to himself thinking about how cineastes will sift through every last bit of faux symbolism and gawk in astonishment at some of the shocking imagery on display. Sure, THE NEON DEMON is the most transgressive summer release to hit mainstream multiplex chains in years, but it feels like lukewarm leftovers otherwise: Refn seems like he's just copying himself, and even the score sounds familiar and uninspired. The busy Martinez--a former drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in the Freaky Styley days-- has composed some of the most memorable film music of the last several years, but even he appears to be on autopilot here, with only the sights and sounds of an early club scene hitting the exhilarating, intoxicating heights of DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES.
A proverbial wide-eyed innocent just off the bus and on her own on the mean streets of L.A., Jesse (Elle Fanning) is a 16-year-old orphan posing as 19--"18 is too on-the-nose," she's told by her agent (Christina Hendricks)--and trying to make it in modeling. She befriends nice-guy photographer Dean (Karl Glusman of Gaspar Noe's LOVE), who takes some shots for her portfolio, and at a test shoot, she meets makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone, in the film's best performance). Ruby senses Jesse is something special, and more or less takes her under her wing, advising her how to navigate the pit of vipers that is the world of fashion modeling. A natural beauty of virginal purity who catches the eye of every photographer and designer she meets, Jesse quickly earns the jealous derision of Ruby's friends Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), models in their very early 20s who have undergone extensive cosmetic surgery and are quickly aging their way out of the business. It doesn't take long before Jesse is well on her way to becoming the next big thing after a photo shoot with starmaker Jack (Desmond Harrington) and closing the latest show by L.A.'s hottest fashion designer (Alessandro Nivola). It's the designer who drives home the notion that "Beauty isn't everything...it's the only thing," passive-aggressively chastising Gigi and her cosmetic artifice. As Jesse is indoctrinated--in an almost ritualistic, sacrificial way--into this new world, she rejects the sincere affections of both Dean and Ruby, starts lording her gift of beauty over others, and the seething Gigi and Sarah decide they've had enough of the ingenue usurping the attention and adoration for which they've had themselves almost completely surgically reconstructed but have yet to reap the benefits.
I suppose it's some kind of auto-critique that a film calling out the shallowness of surface beauty is all shallow surface itself. THE NEON DEMON is an exercise in tedium for its first 90 minutes, riddled with cliches and going nowhere slowly, and by the time the really sick and twisted shit starts in the last half hour, it doesn't come off as shocking, but rather, juvenile and attention-seeking. Refn has nothing new to say here about L.A., fashion, or fame--he's just trying to outrage people and get a reaction. All the foreshadowing about "fresh meat" and the like should give you an idea of where at least some things are going, and it ultimately plays like an unfilmable short story from the halcyon days of splatterpunk, a lot of stuff that reads better on the page than it can possibly play out on the screen. Refn manages to create a few striking images here and there, mostly in the early going (the aforementioned club scene is a highlight), and Hendricks has a memorably acidic line about small-town girls pursuing modeling because "some guy named Chad in the food court told them they were beautiful enough to be a model." But there's an awful lot of very little otherwise, from extraneous supporting characters who serve little or no purpose (Glusman's Dean is absent for long stretches, then just vanishes altogether, and Keanu Reeves seems to have put in a day's work tops, as the repugnant manager of the fleabag motel where Jesse lives) to its painfully obvious metaphor for the way "the scene" chews up the naive innocents and spits them out. There's absolutely no doubt that a cult will form around this and I'm not ruling out another look at it down the line, but this seems like it's all smoke and mirrors, with Refn making a lot of noise but having very little to say.
