CRESWICK
2018 · 10m · Australia
Directed by Natalie Erika James
Tones: dark, melancholic
A young woman helps her father pack up and leave his house, and as they sort through his belongings both become increasingly aware of an unseen presence that has always quietly shared the space with them.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Natalie Erika James made Relic, and this is the short that proves she already had the idea — dementia and the supernatural rendered genuinely indistinguishable, which is the actually terrifying thing.
Before Relic, James was already folding dementia into haunted house logic so seamlessly that the film's horror is inseparable from its grief.
James withholds the explicit supernatural entirely, letting architecture and father-daughter dynamic carry the dread — the same restraint that made Relic remarkable, glimpsed here in nine-minute form. Hereditary's quieter cousin.