Relic (2020)

Australia has punched well above it's weight with magnificent low-budget films this century, first with hard nosed crime dramas, then last decade with striking forays into sci-fi and horror. Even against that back-drop the major film debut from writer-director Natalie Erika James stands out as a masterpiece. Posited as a near Hereditary house-horror film, it works in seamless tandem as both a high-class stock horror and something far superior, a metaphorical look at the scariest monster of all - mortality. An emotionally overwhelming and highly original use of standard horror tropes to examine our relationship with ageing parents to a point that I think it's the only horror film I've seen to make me cry. Astonishingly human and utterly devastating.