Relic

Nothing is ever quite what it seems in Natalie Erika James's atmospheric and genuinely terrifying directorial debut, in which Melbourne worker Kay (Emily Mortimer) returns to her remote family home to search for her missing mother. With daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) in tow, she discovers a house infested with mould and piled high with a lifetime's worth of belongings. While her searches prove fruitless, grandma Edna (Robyn Nevin, fantastic) casually returns one morning, offering no explanation for her absence. As her behaviour grows increasingly erratic, Kay and Sam begin to suspect there's something else in the house with them. Set almost entirely in Edna's disorienting home, Relic excels at twisting horror tropes until they snap. Echoing both The Babadook and Hereditary in its exploration of inherited madness, it's as visually arresting as horror gets, with James's themes (ageing, fate, memory) manifesting in supremely unnerving imagery. The real shocker, though, is the penetrating emotion at the heart of the tale. With events resolving amid disarming tenderness, this could be the scariest horror film to ever make you cry.