Relic

  Relic (not to be confused with The Relic, a fun late 90's creature feature that like a lot of late '90s horror hasn't aged all that well) tells the story of Kay (Emily Mortimer) returning to her old family home with her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) after she's informed her mother has gone missing.

 Grandma Edna (Robyn Nevin) lives alone in a large house in the woods and has a history of dementia. When Kay and Sam arrive at the house they find it recently abandoned and hunker down to either wait for Edna to return or to get some pretty grim news at night, and help with the police search during the day.
 Beyond all the mundane creepiness of an inhabited but slightly run down old house, there are also some hints of unnatural goings-on: strange sounds coming from behind the walls, shadows lurking along the edges of the frame... the subtle, haunting-style effects of a first act in a ghost story.
 Kay also has a nasty nightmare about an old cabin with a withered corpse. This will become significant later.

I'm not a fan of the book, but after watching this I'd love to see Natalie James take on House of Leaves

 Edna returns after a few days, not much worse for wear, in a nightgown and sporting some new bruises. Sam and Kay, realizing nan can't be left alone, decide to stay a couple of weeks with her to keep an eye on things. They also have some difficult choices ahead as to how best handle the situation.

 Cohabitation is difficult beyond the already fraught situation. Edna doesn't just forget things - she's sometimes difficult, even aggressive towards her daughter and grandchild. But as these difficulties escalate, the strange incidents do as well, until the movie jumps off the rails in the best way possible. What was a pretty low-key psychological horror film... well, remains a psychological horror film, but it earns the batshit adjective along the way; Things get much more fantastic than the slower, more buttoned-down first two acts would lead you to expect. Incidents include impossible architecture and a monster chase.

 I adore it when movies surprise me like that. Even better when:
 a) The movie was good to begin with, and
 b) It sticks the landing.
 Here, after some pretty cool mayhem, the script (by director Natalie Erika James and Christian White) pulls a U-turn and ties things together in a bittersweet and emotionally affecting ending. Lovely stuff.

 While the horror elements seem a bit random at points, they are very effective at building up atmosphere and make thematical sense. And even without them, well, dementia is pretty fucking horrifying on its own. The cinematography (by Charlie Sarroff, who did this director's new movie Saccharine and all of Parker Finn's) and direction are top-notch, with lots of great suspense building and careful framing. The film gets a lot of mileage out of what must have been a fairly small budget.
 The story doesn't offer the most sensitive look at mental health issues and its final message is a bit  on the simple side, but it's empathetic and uses the supernatural in a way that ultimately doesn't feel exploitative to me. 

 Honour compels me to say that this was helped reach production by the Russo brothers (along with Jake Gyllenhaal, of all people). Well done Russo Bros. You've still got a lot to make up for.

  This is a great movie - very well made, phenomenally acted, and with an excellent, affecting story in its black mold-infested heart. It's one of those films where the horror absolutely is a metaphor, but don't hold that against it - it fully delivers the goods.