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
OFFICIAL SECRETS (Canada/UK/China/US/Switzerland - 2019)
The saga of British whistleblower Katherine Gun is, at least stateside, one of the least-remembered chapters of the misguided journey to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a way, it's oddly fitting that OFFICIAL SECRETS, which stars Keira Knightley as Gun, was barely released in theaters by IFC Films. That's a shame, because it's a well-done political thriller as well as a solid investigative journalism drama from director/co-writer Gavin Hood, who most recently helmed 2016's riveting drone strike nailbiter EYE IN THE SKY. As the film opens in January 2003, Katherine, who was raised in Taiwan by British parents, works as a Mandarin translator for GCHQ, the signals intelligence division of the British government. It's a largely uneventful job until her entire department is sent a mysterious e-mail from the NSA that goes into detail about an intelligence plot between the US and UK governments to essentially bully and blackmail the less powerful members of the UN Security Council into going to war with Iraq under the guise of Saddam Hussein having WMDs. As everyone has signed an agreement that every aspect of their work falls under the 1989 "Official Secrets" Act, none of Katherine's co-workers give the e-mail much thought and refrain from discussing it. But she's troubled enough by its implications that she passes it on to a trusted government employee friend (MyAnna Buring), who in turn passes it to a controversial activist (Hattie Morahan) who then forwards it to Observer staff writer Martin Bright (Matt Smith). The Observer is fully onboard with the coming war, much to the chagrin of their bad-tempered US politics columnist Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans), who berates managing editor Roger Alton (Conleth Hill) with frequent tirades that they should be doing their jobs as reporters instead of regurgitating Prime Minister Tony Blair's press releases. Alton reluctantly lets Bright run with the story, which eventually blows up in Katherine's face, as she never thought anything would come of it, and now the intelligence higher-ups are calling in the interrogators and breaking out the lie detectors because they know the leak had to come from the GCHQ department.
The resulting shitstorm offers Katherine the usual Alan J. Pakula-esque paranoia of bugged phones, surveillance, and being followed everywhere she goes, and it very nearly gets Katherine's Muslim husband Yasar (Adam Bakri) deported to Iraq. She eventually retains the services of civil liberties attorney Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes) when it becomes clear that the British government intends to prosecute her and send her to prison, with the added threat that even discussing any aspects of the case with a lawyer is itself cause for more charges of violating the Official Secrets Act. OFFICIAL SECRETS is a compelling drama that hits the ground running (it's not even 20 minutes in before we get a clandestine meeting in a dimly-lit parking garage), with a credible and restrained performance by Knightley that wisely avoids all the big awards-bait moments to keep her depiction of Katherine Gun as grounded as possible. The back end does suffer from a bit of some fawning Gun hagiography, and it may seem a little fashionably late as far as Iraq War-related movies go, but for the most part, OFFICIAL SECRETS is a fine film that deserved more attention than it got and probably could've been a decent word-of-mouth hit on the arthouse circuit (other familiar faces in the solid ensemble cast include Matthew Goode, Jeremy Northam, Indira Varma, and Kenneth Cranham). The closing scene, and particularly Fiennes' final line, would've been a real crowd-pleaser. (R, 112 mins)
MARY (US/Canada - 2019)
Remember when Gary Oldman won an Oscar for 2017's DARKEST HOUR? By any chance, does Gary Oldman remember? Just a few months ago, he appeared in the unwatchable support-group-for-assassins "comedy" KILLERS ANONYMOUS and he currently stars in the straight-to-VOD actioner THE COURIER (don't worry, I'm sure I'll get to it soon enough), where he's second-billed to Olga Kurylenko, currently third on the action heroine depth chart behind Milla Jovovich and Noomi Rapace. These aren't the kind of projects you tackle when you've just been awarded an actor's highest honor. They're the kind of jobs Nicolas Cage accepts to pay his bills for another month. And in the case with the moronic "possessed yacht" horror movie MARY, it's even worse as Oldman reportedly stepped in to replace--wait for it--Nicolas Cage. Dude, you're less than two years out from an Academy Award and you're taking Nicolas Cage's 2019 turndowns? To damn with faint praise, MARY is slightly better than KILLERS ANONYMOUS, but then, so are most new Nic Cage movies. MARY is a weak hodgepodge of at least a half-dozen underdeveloped ideas that are mostly abandoned amidst the incoherent mayhem that develops. Oldman phones it in as Dave, a Florida fisherman who impulsively buys a ramshackle old yacht called Mary in an attempt to set up his own boat charter business. It's also his way of trying to bring his family back together after his wife Sarah (Emily Mortimer) had a brief fling that put a strain on both their marriage and her relationship with their oldest daughter Lindsey (Stefanie Scott), while younger daughter Mary (Chloe Perrin) remains blissfully unaware of all the tension. I don't know...if Dave thinks buying a shitty old boat is gonna save his marriage, then I can see why Sarah stepped out on him.
They set sail on the Mary for a journey to the waters of Bermuda (uh oh), along with Dave's friend and business partner Mike (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Lindsey crush Tommy (Owen Teague), and it isn't long before strange shit starts happening: Mary has a new imaginary friend and is drawing creepy pictures and smashes a glass in Lindsey's face (the only genuinely shocking moment); Tommy carves a symbol into his chest and attacks Dave; a ghostly figure pulls some INSIDIOUS jump scare moves on Sarah; and Mike loses it and tries to throw the family overboard. The entire film is told in flashback by Sarah to Jacksonville detective Clarkson (Jennifer Esposito), who's been brought in by the Coast Guard after Sarah and her daughters appeared to be the only survivors of a shipwreck. Clarkson quickly recommends a padded cell and a psych eval after listening to Sarah's story of a possessed boat and that "Evil needs a body to exist...the body was that boat." Written by Anthony Jaswinski (THE SHALLOWS) and directed by Michael Goi (who's helmed several episodes of AMERICAN HORROR STORY), MARY revels in every hackneyed horror cliche in the book, like Sarah conveniently finding a scrapbook of old-timey news clippings--that look like they were quickly generated on a production assistant's laptop that morning--detailing all the crews that set sail on the Mary going back to 1883 and were never seen again, and that the ghost haunting the ship is that of the drowned daughter of the very first Mary captain. Who left the scrapbook there for her? The ghost? That was awfully helpful of her. And how powerful is this malevolent spirit when Sarah can incapacitate it with a flare gun? The closing credits roll at 77 minutes after a twist ending you'll absolutely see coming, and the only mystery is why Oldman (and Mortimer, for that matter) is wasting his time with junk like this. The guy pretty much swept the Best Actor category throughout the 2018 awards season. I'd like to think he could parlay that into something more substantive than "Gary Oldman's MOON IN SCORPIO." (R, 84 mins)
SPECTRAL (US - 2016) Directed by Nic Mathieu. Written by George Nolfi. Cast: James Badge Dale, Emily Mortimer, Bruce Greenwood, Max Martini, Cory Hardrict, Clayne Crawford, Gonzalo Menendez, Ursula Parker, Stephen Root, Aaron Serban, Dylan Smith, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Ryan Robbins, Jimmy Akingbola. (Unrated, 108 mins) After over a year on the shelf, SPECTRAL, a $70 million Legendary Pictures-produced sci-fi horror actioner, was set to open in theaters nationwide in August 2016. That never happened, as it was abruptly yanked from the release schedule a few weeks earlier after Legendary's WARCRAFT bombed and distributor Universal grew skittish about having another expensive summer flop on its hands, even though WARCRAFT was a hit everywhere in the world but America. They shopped SPECTRAL around to other studios and found a taker in Netflix, who are now streaming it as a "Netflix Original." It's not a great movie by any means, and it likely would've ended up tanking in theaters just as Universal feared, especially being a summer movie lacking any big name draws in front of or behind the camera. In that respect, Netflix seems like perfect platform for SPECTRAL, where it's free from box office expectations and can earn the minor cult following it's inevitably going to get. Military-contracted science researcher Dr. Mark Clyne (James Badge Dale, a solid supporting actor, but c'mon, who puts a $70 million summer sci-fi action movie on the shoulders of James Badge Dale?) is summoned to Moldova to help a tactical unit that's been using high-tech "spectral" combat helmet cam goggles that he designed. He's informed by Gen. Orland (Bruce Greenwood) and CIA operative Fran Madison (Emily Mortimer) that the cameras have been picking up images of apparitions--termed "hyperspectral anomalies"--who have attacked and killed several members of the Delta Force team, led by Sgt. Sessions (Max Martini, Dale's 13 HOURS co-star). Orland and Madison believe it's a cloaking device being used by enemy insurgents, which Clyne dismisses since the US hasn't even come close to achieving that capability. Orland orders Clyne and Madison to accompany Sessions and what's left of the Delta team to find another unit that went missing the day before, obviously taken out by the "anomalies," ghostly specters that can only be seen through the combat goggles or the light from a hyperspectral camera that Clyne creates on the fly when most of the goggles are destroyed in a paranormal skirmish.
Written by George Nolfi (a good buddy of Matt Damon's who co-scripted OCEAN'S TWELVE and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, and wrote and directed THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU) and directed by feature-debuting TV commercial vet Nic Mathieu, SPECTRAL dives pretty deep into hard sci-fi with Clyne's theories on the origin of the anomalies. They're impervious to weapons and can travel through any surface except iron and ceramic, which leads Clyne to believe they're man-made via bosons hovering near absolute zero with a cooled gas of extremely low density and known as the Bose-Einstein Condensate, which is not something Joe Multiplex normally expects to be name-dropped in a big-budget summer action movie. SPECTRAL has some great ideas, but while Nolfi's script talks a big game, it doesn't really have the brains to back it up. The scene where Clyne explains everything to Madison and the soldiers turns into a momentum-killing monologue because Dale has a difficult time selling it when he just keeps anxiously repeating "ceramic" and "condensate." He doesn't sound like he knows what he's talking about, probably because Nolfi doesn't either and should probably be sharing the screenplay credit with Wikipedia. Nevertheless, SPECTRAL is very well-made, and with location shooting in Hungary, Slovakia, and Israel, it definitely looks like a "bigger" movie than one usually associates with "Netflix Original." It also boasts some impressive visual effects and refreshingly coherent combat sequences, and with its stark, ominous Eastern European setting (most of this was shot in Bucharest) and some lighting and cinematography techniques, it would appear that SPECTRAL owes a stylistic debt to Michael Mann's 1983 cult classic THE KEEP. The biggest structural influence is obviously James Cameron's 1986 masterpiece ALIENS, right down to the discovery of a little Moldovan orphan girl (Ursula Parker, one of the daughters on LOUIE) who isn't named "Newt," but might as well be (all that's missing is a scheming Paul Reiser to sabotage the mission). Feeling like BLACK HAWK DOWN retooled as a John Ringo or David Weber military sci-fi novel published by Baen Books, SPECTRAL isn't nearly as smart as it thinks it is, but its ambition is appreciated. It delivers if you're looking for action, special effects, and atmosphere, so this really is custom-made for Netflix streaming.
