M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, Relic mine age for new horror movie scares

Horror helps us face our losses. Horror walks on the thin line between comedy and tragedy, choosing from both and challenging us to express our feelings. Don’t open that door! Don’t go down the stairs! Don’t wander out into the night! Don’t summon ghosts or demons! We collectively respond to horror because of the ebullience of that cathartic release, and because the genre has instructed us to know what’s coming within the confines of its format. And what’s coming is something or someone who will take from us, and force us to reckon with what’s left behind — and what’s left of us.

Nearly every horror villain uses the us-vs.–them strategy: serial killers; ghosts and demons; monsters and other things that happen in the dark. And for a long time, the elderly have been part of that “them,” too.

Numerous filmmakers have used elderly people as jump scare providers or villains: Rosemary’s Baby Mulholland Drive The VisitThe Insidious series. In many films, the older people have their own goals: fear and control. (Or hunger as in Troma’s 1988 film Rabid GranniesIn which two grandmothers share their inheritance with one another. Understandable!)

Cynthia J. Miller (author) and A. Bowdoin Van Riper (autographer) contribute to the book Elder Horror: Essays on Film’s Frightening Images of Aging that the horror genre presents “a dark version of the familiar trope about the elderly: that their knowledge and experience extends into areas of which the young know nothing.” That analysis applies to many films that play with psychological, surreal, and even comedic horror. To Rosemary’s (Mia Farrow) neighbors in Rosemary’s BabyShe is raped, drugged, brainwashed, and forced to have a demonic infant by her friends. Betty (Naomi Watts), one of the older travel companions, is a friend to in Mulholland Drive, who reassure her that she has what it takes to make it in Los Angeles — and who then shrink down under her door, sneak into her apartment, and terrorize her at night. To all the Insidious ghosts, such as the Bride and Woman in Black, which try to seize visitors to the Further, so they return to the real world to live. The psychiatric patients who have escaped. The VisitThese are the grandchildren who use the trust they place in their grandparents. (That film’s found-footage style “contributes significantly to the realism of the fear and uncertainty surrounding the grandparents’ aging process,” writes Stephanie M. Flint in her Elder Horror essay “The Limits of ‘Sundowning’: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit and the Horror of the Aging Body.”)

With that “old people are spooky” trope in place, in recent years a number of films have tweaked it by suggesting that the ProcessThe process of getting older can be a form of body horror. You can find out more about In Relic An Old Version Bingo HellAnd The ManorFear of losing bodily autonomy due to memory loss, sickness, or decay has been amplified to frightening extremes. Recognizing this transformation is crucial to terror and the persistent disturbance that these films leave behind.

Image: Amazon Studios

In Natalie Erika James’s RelicKay (Emily Mortimer), and Sam (Bella Heathcote), move in with Edna (Roby Negvin), their grandmother. The intergenerational relationships are fraught, and dread weighs as heavy as the black mold that has been growing in Edna’s home and on her body. Her black mold starts to spread and she begins to be confused and violent. Is the house causing Edna’s increasingly damaged body, or is this the natural impact of her loneliness? Whatever the reason, it is a problem. Relic emphasizes that aging is irreversible, and that the breakdown of one’s body is a toxic process that spreads outward and affects our descendants.

An Old VersionAn adaptation of the graphic book Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters — and Shyamalan’s return to this trope after The Visit — makes a similar point about how aging affects not just the individual, but the people who they love and who love them. The thriller features three people spending a day (literally!) together at a beach on the tropical coast. Without their knowledge, they’re visiting a place where they age a year for every 30 minutes they spend there, which means that whatever underlying medical conditions they have become grotesquely obvious. Everyone’s body in An Old Version They are betrayed by schizophrenia, epilepsy and hypocalcemia. Most tragic is what happens to those who are young children who end up on the beaches as teens or tweens. They become figures that their family, friends, and relatives can barely remember, as they age from 6 to 11 years old to 15. With the passing of time, there is a loss of opportunities. “There’s so many memories we didn’t have. It’s not fair,” says 15-year-old Kara (Eliza Scanlen), and given that An Old VersionThis line was popularly relatable because it came out in the COVID-19 epidemic.

Universal Pictures Photo

Blumhouse Productions, the modern horror masters, has taken this theme to heart with two movies through its Welcome to the Blumhouse partnership. Bingo HellAnd The ManorThis is a. They both focus on feelings of loneliness that may accompany aging. Do they want to be involved in your daily life? Will they leave you behind?

Bingo Hell sets these musings in a neighborhood that is being rapidly gentrified, and where children and grandchildren don’t swing by as often as they should. Once the local bingo hall is bought by new owner Mr. Big (Richard Brake), the community’s elderly falls under the spell of his promised cash prizes — until longtime resident Lupita (Adriana Barraza) realizes that Mr. Big might not be as generous as he seems. The Manor explores a similar message about the desperation — and physical damage — brought on by the sense that one’s second chances are running out. After suffering a stroke, Judith Albright (Barbara Hershey) checks herself into a nursing home, to the shock of her beloved grandson Josh (Nicholas Alexander), who doesn’t see his grandmother as old. But once Judith is settled into the facility, she’s unnerved by how the staff doesn’t listen to the residents’ complaints about seeing strange things like a monster made out of tree bark and teenagers running around the grounds at night. The uphill battle Judith fights to be believed is a commentary on the disrespect with which we can treat our most vulnerable, and the frustration Hershey captures regarding Judith’s brain/body disconnect is a reminder that we’ll eventually feel this way, too.

These characters are all monstrous versions of “respect your elders,” but they also serve another purpose. Depending on your belief in the supernatural, it’s fairly rare to imagine waking up one day possessed or craving blood. However, it’s normal and common to feel a bit older each day. One day, the old will look horribly like us. And the fear of the aging process means that we must not escape it if we wish to live long enough. Staying safe, especially during COVID-19 is about staying as close to home as you can. The horror that is our inability to stop the time-continuing linear march of progress is all too real.

RelicShowtime offers it. An Old VersionDigital rental or purchase are possible. Bingo HellAnd The ManorPrime Video streams live.