Relic review, Culture Whisper (LFF 2020)
Most filmmakers, certainly nowadays, make a few shorts before embarking on the treacherous territory of a feature. They refine their skills and their style, carrying them into the movie they’ve been waiting their entire lives to make. But often they transfer too much, as is the case with Natalie Erika James and her debut horror film Relic.
The first two-thirds of this 90-minute family drama slog pointlessly, scaffolding characters without much development happening, before twisting into a formulaically scary final act. Relic’s concept was engendered through James’s short film Creswick, which is no surprise. She attempts to stretch that story and stick on various appendages to fill the proper runtime for a feature film. Although the film is passable as a debut and shows her visual potential as a filmmaker, there’s a lot of empty space.
