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Horror

Of all Ruins

On Rot, Dementia, and Gothic Horror

Tom Humberstone

• 3 min read
Of all Ruins

Relic (2020) Dir. Natalie Erika James

Kay and her daughter, Sam, go home to check on Kay’s mother Edna. Edna has been missing for several days and can’t remember where she’s been. She is convinced an intruder is in the house, hiding under her bed.

“Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.” - Sherlock Holmes

We’re coming to the end of the month and so let’s talk about decline, decay… and rot.

Mmmm… Delicious rot. It permeates this film. Damp, mouldy decay eats away at every frame. Everything is decaying. We’re decaying. Our minds are decaying. We’re all relics in the making.

In press for Relic, director and co-writer Natalie Erika James talks about her love of Japanese horror. James namechecks Pulse, Ring, The Grudge, and Cure as particular inspirations. But the film that I can see most parallels with is Dark Water. That film, too, is consumed with damp and decay. I find something about these visuals particularly affecting. They make me itch and squirm in my seat. The sight of black mould is so instinctively repulsive to me. Black mould can be a common cause of something called sick building syndrome. Which is appropriate here I think. 

Because the family home in Relic is very much Edna’s mind. As three generations of the family get stuck in its maze-like structure, and as it slowly succumbs to the deliberate creep of decay, the connection between it and the family becomes ever clearer.

“Since your grandfather passed, this house has seemed unfamiliar. Bigger. … I keep thinking it’s just been waiting for me, waiting until I was weak enough, alone enough, that it could get at me.” - Edna

The film is something of a three hander where we get to follow each generation and their own worries and concerns through the film. Edna is perhaps the hardest to read as she has become an unreliable narrator to herself, but Relic refuses to cast her as a simple horror antagonist.

“Particularly in horror, there’s the crazy old lady trope, and mental health is often depicted in a simplistic way – ‘Othering’ people who are suffering, as opposed to bringing in their experience and exploring it from what that must feel like.” - Natalie Erika James

As with The Stone Tape, by subverting and playing with the tropes of gothic narratives, we get fresh and interesting approaches to the temporal nature of ghosts and hauntings:

“When you have Alzheimer’s you are almost existing in other timelines, which is what ghosts are. People from the past coming to the present. In some ways, Edna exists in the past and the present simultaneously. That has an unsettling, uncanny ghost-like quality to it.” - Natalie Erika James

Horror is a perfect genre to explore the heartbreak and sadness of watching a loved one lose themselves. It’s purpose-built to let us explore the terror of it, empathise, see it from alternating perspectives and, hopefully, find some catharsis or comfort from it. Horror can prepare us. Gird us. And make us feel less alone when we’re dealing with the worst life can bring.

Where can I watch it in the UK?

You can stream it for free on BBC iPlayer.

Pairs well with

The Father (2020, dir. Florian Zeller, available to rent or buy for £2.99 on Amazon) is, again, maybe not a strict genre film, but it’s filmed and edited like a horror. Because of odd release schedules around the mid-pandemic - and the bizarre Oscar win where Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor on the night everyone expected Chadwick Boseman to win it posthumously - I’m not sure how many people have seen it. 

The film takes place largely in Anthony’s head (also the character’s name, I’m not just being overly familiar) and so we are forced to see time and people the way he sees them. He moves from past to present as quickly and as jarringly as he moves from room to room. It’s completely disorientating and unsettling. Because we are in his head, we’re inevitably as confused as he is and it’s heartbreaking when the pieces come together. An excellent film with incredible performances that I feel is underseen.

Further Reading
Other Recommendations
  • If you’re looking for more audio based horror drama: have you listened to Quiet Part Loud from Jordan Peele? It’s exclusively on Spotify annoyingly, but worth a listen.