The director of 'Relic' explains the movie's poignant and unexpected ending

• Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "Relic."
• Director Natalie Erika James explained the film's unexpected finale to Insider.
• At the end of "Relic," Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) return to the home of Edna (Robyn Nevin) after narrowly escaping with their lives.
• Edna, who's Kay's mother and Sam's grandmother, had succumbed to a mysterious force that caused her to become possessed and violent, nearly killing Kay and Sam in the process.
• But instead of fleeing the house once they've subdued Edna, first Kay, and then Sam, return to lay with Edna's now-decomposing corpse.
• James told Insider that the unexpected ending was the result of Kay's childhood trauma and guilt over her mother's condition as well as Sam's desire to remain close to her mother and grandmother.

Director Natalie Erika James opened up about the unexpected and poignant ending to her film "Relic" in a new interview with Insider.

"Relic" follows Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) as they travel to their relative Edna's (Robyn Nevin) sprawling rural home after she goes missing. Edna is Kay's mother and Sam's grandmother, and upon arriving, the two women notice ominous signs of Edna's deteriorating mental state, including disturbing notes she left to herself.

Eventually, Edna returns, and Kay, feeling guilty for abandoning her mother for so long, tries to arrange for Edna to be put in a home. But the strange occurrences continue, with mysterious shadows and terrifying dreams from childhood haunting Kay and, to a lesser extent, Sam.

This is your last chance to head back before major spoilers in the movie.

The end of the film sees Edna transform into a monstrous, rotting corpse who chases Kay and Sam through her now-cramped and moldering home.

Kay eventually subdues Edna, but instead of escaping with Sam, she turns back at the last moment to spend a final moment with her mother — peeling back Edna's gray, decaying skin to reveal a blackened, fetus-like creature.

"I've always been intrigued by the idea of childhood trauma or childhood nightmares resurfacing later in life," the director said of the film's final spooky moments. "And I think that when dynamics within your family shift, and you kind of start to parent your parents, I think it inevitably makes you look back to your own childhood."

According to James, the nightmares Kay has — revolving around the reanimated corpse of her great-grandfather, who was left to die alone of dementia in an old cabin on the property — are one of the reasons why she decides to turn back and spend one last moment with her mother.

"The mythology tied up with the great grandfather's story... the idea that this is a story that had really haunted Kay for years — that's what we're finding out," James said of Kay's nightmares. "That story is one of neglect and abandonment, basically a poor old man being left alone."

"I think for that to come back and haunt her kind of feeds into her guilt that she feels about not being there for her mother," the filmmaker continued. "So it's important to her that she, I guess, processes those things, and revisits those years to make that final decision at the end."

The ending is poignant, and a bit unexpected for a horror movie, in which escaping a haunted house or violent situation is generally the norm. But even though the finale for "Relic" makes sense in the narrative, James told Insider that there was a push from some of the film's financial supporters to make the final product even more terrifying.

"I would say there was a lot of push to, I suppose, push the film further into horror," she said. "It was something that we had to keep our eye on, to really give each part of the script the emotional through-line and the core framework as much as we could."

"I think it's fine to say 'give me more scares, give me more horror, but if the story hasn't earned it, I think you can feel the sleight of hand at play and you end up with the result that maybe, it's a bit more forgettable," James added.

"Relic" premieres July 10 in theaters and On Demand. You can watch the trailer below.

• Read more:
• 'Relic' is a tense new horror movie that contains a poignant message about dementia
• 'Relic' director Natalie Erika James wants to change how we view women in horror movies
• 'Relic' director Natalie Erika James says she changed a part of her movie after 'Hereditary' came out