In this episode, horror and pornography become not so strange bedfellows in Ti West’s “X”. A love letter to 1970s low budget filmmaking, the movie blends humor, heart and lots of boobs to create a shockingly effective meditation on the complexities of aging. We’re going to spoil the hell out of this film today so stay tuned.
And if you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to check out these resources that dive into the specter of aging in horror films!
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Relic (2020) is a profoundly disturbing Australian film that tackles the horror of aging more effectively than any other film I’ve seen. Indeed, it exemplifies how horror film as a genre is uniquely adept at exploring—at making its viewers viscerally feel—the things that really scare us.
The first full-length feature for director Natalie Erika James, who also co-wrote the film with Christian White, Relic features an astounding performance by Robyn Nevin as Edna, an elderly woman living alone in a large house and suffering from worsening dementia. She wanders her house, which is filled with tangible signs of all her memories, and yet she struggles to remember things—who the people are in her photographs, whether they are real or not, alive or not, and even who she is: the camera finds a label on which is written “My name is Edna.”
taking horror seriously so you don't have to
