10 Recent Horror Films That Didn't Insult Your Intelligence

The fourth entry on the list and still no sign of an American release; access to world cinema has never been easier now that VOD platforms like Netflix, and newcomers Hulu and Shudder have hit the ground running. Premiering at Sundance in 2020, Relic (no, not the 1997 Tom Sizemore monster mash-up) is the pitch perfect spiritual successor to The Babadook, Australia's 2014 breakout horror masterpiece.

When Kay's mother Edna goes missing from her outback country home for several days, she and her daughter Sam realise that Edna's dementia has progressed to the point where she can no longer look after herself. The house is a tip, black mould is beginning to grow from the walls and more alarmingly, Edna has developed a sinister bruise on her chest.

Kay's solution is a private care home but when Sam begins to see a black figure lurking in the shadows, perhaps all is not as it seems.

Using horror as a metaphor for the realities of human suffering is nothing new yet unlike clumsier attempts, Relic handles the sensitivity of degenerative mental disease with great skill. The notion of someone becoming lost in their own home is no longer allegorical here; the rooms and corridors, stacked with a lifetime of accumulated junk begin to literally form a maze of inescapable dark corridors and Escher like spatial paradoxes.

The closing scene of Kay's eventual acceptance works on multiple levels - we are all ultimately our parent's children, warts and all.