VOD - Relic : discover the new trailer

By Mulder, 23 may 2020

“Several years ago I took a trip back to Japan to see my grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. It was a trip I’d kept delaying for one reason or another, and when I finally got around to seeing her, it turned out I’d left it too late – she didn’t recognize who I was. The guilt was hard to swallow. At a certain level, it felt worse than death - to see your loved one progressively lose parts of themselves, and slowly become a stranger. The rural town where my grandmother lives is where I’d spent many of my summer holidays, attending the local primary school with my cousins. During that trip I observed how much the town had declined – all the younger generations choosing to relocate to the bigger cities, leaving an aging community behind. There were horror stories about elderly people being found dead in their homes well after the fact – neglected and forgotten, their children in distant towns, their bodies starting to deteriorate. I could think of nothing more heartbreaking. It’s a combination of these things that became the starting point for Relic. Using a multigenerational story to create a character driven, emotionally resonant horror, I sought to explore the heartbreak and horrors of aged dementia, the importance of human connection and the shifting roles and dynamics within a family. Relic begins more firmly rooted in drama, and slowly devolves into a horror and genre space, mirroring Edna’s mental and physical deterioration. Edna’s descent into the Other demonstrates that there are more horrific things than simply death. What’s worse is grieving for the loss of someone while they are still alive; it is the degradation of once brilliant minds, kind souls, and a treasured lifetime of memories; it is the feeling of becoming a stranger to the person who brought you into the world – these are the true terrors.” - Natalie Erika James

Carver Films Producers Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw met writer and director Natalie Erika James in 2012 after seeing her VCA graduating short film, Tritch, which explored China’s one-child policy through a horror framework. James shared the early concept of Relic, a story inspired by her own family’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease.
Natalie recalls “The original inspiration for Relic was drawn from personal experience, of my grandmother having Alzheimer’s and looking at the changing relationship between her and my mother. And the shifting dynamics within a family when the parent assumes the role of the child.” At its core, Relic explores the fear and heartbreak of dementia and ageing through a horror lens. Carver boarded early, securing development support for James and co-writer Christian White’s script from Screen Australia and later, Film Victoria. The complete development process from initial concept to shooting was approximately three years: 2015 – 2018. Natalie and Christian were also awarded an AWGIE award for the script of Creswick, shot in 2017 as a proof-of-concept for Relic.

To create the Relic family – daughter, mother and grandmother – the team enlisted casting director Avy Kaufman.  Casting Kay British-born actress Emily Mortimer was drawn to the real life horror and complex family dynamics being explored in Relic. “It’s a story about a family coping with someone who has dementia and the ramifications, and the horror, the real-life horror of dealing with an elderly relative who starts losing their grip on reality and how it does affect and infect, the whole family in ways that are at times, horrifying.” Emily could relate to Kay’s plight, “It’s not a stretch to imagine yourself in this situation. It’s incredibly relatable because we’re all in a family. And family relationships are always complex. And you always feel guilt and regret and resentment and love and all these things in equal measure. And constantly one of these emotions is being replaced by another and back again. I just felt that was very true to my experience of life.” For director Natalie Erika James, Emily brought a unique quality to Kay, “I think on paper, Kay in particular, comes across as quite a severe character. Stern and steadfast. But with Emily Mortimer coming onboard, who has such a natural, empathetic presence... that severity was tempered and made Kay a very sympathetic character.”

Not afraid to embrace the challenge of an Australian accent, Natalie was thrilled with Emily’s imagining of Kay. “She’s such a gracious and generous actor who really has such amazing instincts and ideas. I constantly felt like I was being challenged in the best way possible. It felt like a true collaboration.” Casting Edna Australian actor Robyn Nevin was tasked with the challenge of portraying Edna, the character at the centre of an unrecognisable decline due to Alzheimer’s. Natalie believes Robyn infused the character with charm and a dry, acerbic wit and skilfully captured “Edna’s vulnerability and her uncertainty as her body and mind start to deteriorate. I think Robyn captured that very effectively.” “The challenges of playing a character like Edna are considerable. Because she’s suffering from Alzheimer’s which is a terrible blight on anybody’s life. It’s very difficult to understand the innerworkings of the mind of someone who is suffering from this condition. That remains a mystery to all of us... But there’s also a terrible sadness in playing such a character, for obvious reasons.” says Robyn.

Casting Sam To play the role of granddaughter Sam, Los Angeles based Bella Heathcote returned to her hometown of Melbourne after more than a decade of working abroad. Bella found 20-something drifter Sam relatable. “She’s unpretentious. She doesn’t pull any punches. She’s tough. She seems pretty comfortable within her own skin. I wish I was like Sam in my 20s.” Like Robyn, Bella was attracted to the complex female relationships, “Each of us are depicted as very flawed, and human, and we still have full capacity for joy and love towards each other, and all of those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Principal photography for Relic took place over 6 weeks in Melbourne in October and November 2018. Further pickups were shot in Los Angeles and Melbourne during post production. To bring the visuals of Relic to life, Natalie worked with long time collaborator and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff. They’d previously created a visual language on Creswick, Relic’s proof-of-concept, and the feature was a natural extension of their working relationship. For Natalie and Charlie, embracing darkness and shadows was key to their approach. Stylistically, the pair opted for a largely naturalistic approach, leaning heavily on practical lights. More restrained in the first act of the film, they embraced darkness and shadows as events start to unravel, shifting to a more claustrophobic, handheld approach. Charlie explains “Stylistically that marries in well with the emotional states of the characters, especially Edna, whose mind is retreating to the darkside of dementia.”

Production Designer Steven Jones-Evans worked with producers Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw on Partisan. Steven read the Relic script and felt it was “a beautifully evocative kind of combination of horror story as well as intimate human drama.” Steven met with director Natalie Erika James and they found that his initial design ideas and references had much in common with Natalie’s vision for the film. The main location – Edna’s house – was a combination of two real locations and a studio build, with the design and construction teams working closely to ensure the result is seamless. In his approach to the design of the film and in particular Edna’s house, Steven sought to evoke what was happening to Edna, her loss of memory and identity and disorientation in spaces she inhabits. The house, like its owner, has a faded glamour. It was once elegant but since the death of her husband and the onset of dementia, Edna has let parts of the house go. Conveniently, areas of the house used for exterior, garden and kitchen, had suffered some similar neglect and did not need much dressing.

Steven chose not to go too dark with the colour palette, many of the rooms in the house would have been elegant, warm and inviting but are now disused or neglected, a pile of unread mail and newspapers at the front door, dust on the dressing table, flowers which have long since withered are still in a vase forgotten or unnoticed. The set dressings suggest Edna’s loss of memory, identity and purpose, at once familiar and unfamiliar. In particular Steven created spaces where things are hidden, where darkness is at the edge of frame and doesn’t reveal all the information to the audience.

Natalie recalls “One of the concepts we infused the set with and certainly some of the cinematography, is the  idea of something being hidden. So you’ll notice in the film, there’s always areas unseen. There’s often things obscuring frames or spaces falling into black... always stemming from the idea of what you can’t see.”  A wonderful creative challenge was the creation of the ‘labyrinth’ which was a visual metaphor for Edna’s mind and the experience of someone with dementia feeling lost within the walls of their own home. Steven enjoyed working with Natalie, saying it was a very collaborative process. “Natalie is a very astute director, very detail focus... Confident in her beliefs but not too strident and incredibly collaborative at the same time.”

The transformation of Edna to the Other had several stages and involved close collaboration between makeup, prosthetics, animatronics, stunt and visual effects departments. The prosthetics team was led by experienced artist Larry Van Duynhoven. Natalie fondly recalls the moment the Other was finally revealed to her, “They’d managed to capture – effectively in a creature – so much humanity and fragility in this form, and the animatronic work was so subtle and moving... There was definitely a few tears shed.” The all-female stunt team also worked closely throughout rehearsals and production to prepare the cast for their scenes. Actress Emily Mortimer recalls “There’s been all sorts of moments on set, where’s it’s just been the three of us and Natalie, and three stunt women, and we’re all having a full on fight. Pummelling each other... And one of us is a 70-something year old woman. Three stunt women, three actresses and a female director, all working out this very intricate fight scene. And how badass the whole thing is.”

With its special blend of drama and horror, Natalie worked with two editors, Denise Haratzis and Sean Lahiff, who each brought something unique to the edit process. Natalie explains “Relic definitely starts off as more of a drama to begin with but then slowly descends into the genre horror space. And that was certainly a conscious decision, mostly to mirror the experience of someone going through dementia or Alzheimer’s, and the people around them. Changes that feel small and benign to begin with – just a bit of forgetfulness - become much worse, and I guess that’s what I was trying to depict on screen.” Natalie explains the way her love of Asian and gothic horror influenced her thinking with Relic; “I love the way it plays with the line between what’s imagined in the character’s mind and what’s real. Sometimes the supernatural, or the seemingly supernatural, has a real world explanation. That’s something we really played with in Relic... there’s always two possibilities to each question.”

Relic’s music and sound design were tightly interwoven, necessitating a very collaborative process between Los Angeles based composer Brian Reitzell (Lost in Translation, Hannibal) and Australian-based, Academy-Award winning sound designer Robert Mackenzie (The King, Hacksaw Ridge). Natalie drew heavily on diegetic sounds, particularly to inform the scares, “drawing on real sounds. Also using silence effectively, and choosing key scenes for the score without imposing emotion on the audience.”

Relic had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019 to critical acclaim, praising the film as a fresh and terrifying twist on the notorious haunted-house tale.

Synopsis :
When elderly mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) inexplicably vanishes, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) rush to their family's decaying country home, finding clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence. After Edna returns just as mysteriously as she disappeared, Kay's concern that her mother seems unwilling or unable to say where she's been clashes with Sam's unabashed enthusiasm to have her grandma back. As Edna's behavior turns increasingly volatile, both begin to sense that an insidious presence in the house might be taking control of her. All three generations of women are brought together through trauma and a powerful sense of strength and loyalty to face the ultimate fear together.

Relic
Directed by Natalie Erika James
Producers: Anna McLeish, Sarah Shaw, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riva Marker
Screenplay by Natalie Erika James and Christian White
Starring: Emily Mortimer, Bella Heathcote, Robyn Nevin
Executive Producers: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Todd Makurath, Wang Zhongjun, Wang Zhonglei, Hu Junyi
Cinematographer: Charlie Sarroff
Music by Brian Reitzell
Edited by Denise Haratzis, Sean Lahiff
Production companies : Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Nine Stories Productions, AGBO, Carver Films
Distributor: IFC Midnight
Release Date: July 10, 2020 (Theaters, VOD, Digital Rental)
Running time : 89 minutes

Photos : Copyright IFC Films

(Source : press release)