The Relic (1997)

Too much of everything

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Peter Hyam's The Relic takes a smaller horror idea that usually services a low budget production and gives it the expensive, near blockbuster treatment. The result is a pretty damn fine creature feature flick that holds up better than it has any right too. When you've got a director like Hyams at the wheel though (see End Of Days), who is a meticulous perfectionist and often serves as DoP in addition to directing, you're going to get class and durability all the way. Relic takes an ages old concept and injects wild screaming life into it; When an ancient artifact is brought from the South American jungle and stored at the Chicago museum of anthropology, trouble is not far off, for as we know in movie land, any ancient relic most definitely has a supernatural curse on it. Before too long a gigantic angry lizard thing from olden times awakens, tears through the building like the stampede from Jumanji and starts eating everyone it sees. It's up to heroic police detective Vincent D'Agosta (Tom Sizemore in a rare lead role) and professor Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller, what ever happened to her?) to use their wits and survive long enough to defeat it. Linda Hunt, that sweet little munchkin, also has a nice role as the museum director. The film is just pure fun to watch, a solid popcorn banger that has the look and feel of an old school adventure film, or something by Stephen Sommers, albeit with a healthy helping of slimy gore. The creature is truly immense, and one feels the scope of it's rampage as Hyam's camera arcs through the vast hallways and mezzanines of the building, following the action in crisp, tactile strokes. Sort of a forgotten gem, but one that's always fun to check out.

THE RELIC has to be one of the most disappointing monster movies ever made. I remember buying this on VHS when it first came out back in 1998 and feeling completely disappointed by it. The problem isn't the story, which is run-of-the-mill monster nonsense. It's a combination of the execution and the script, which combine to equal one of the most lacklustre monster flicks of all time. The movie takes an age to get going. Before anything in the region of 'interesting' happens, we're introduced to a bunch of particularly bland or detestable characters. When a slumming-it Tom Sizemore, playing a tired-looking cop, is the best character in the film, you know you're in trouble.Penelope Ann Miller is one of those actresses who just seemed to disappear from our screens around this time. It's easy to see why; she's neither photogenic nor a talented actress, and when you combine this with her interfering, irritating character it makes for a bad combination. Her 'frightened face' is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Look out for a couple of clichés at her workplace: the crotchety, gnarled old boss (Linda Hunt), the wheelchair bound genius (old timer James Whitmore, who deserves better), and the sinister, treacherous Asian (Lo Chi Muoi).Attempts are made to make things interesting by throwing in some gruesome crime scene shots of a severed head, but these do nothing to increase the entertainment value. Instead the movie plods on, cliché follows cliché, and finally we get a look at the beast: not Stan Winston's best work, it has to be said, the monster here looks like a primal rip-off of PREDATOR and is animated via some poor CGI (the laughable tongue scene is a real low point of the movie). In the last reel the film actually picks up, although by then it's too little, too late. We get a few cool scenes of the monster munching on party guests and taking apart a few SWAT guys (they even throw in the old 'severed guy' gag) before a ludicrous climax in which Miller manages to outrun a fireball that, in reality, would explode in about three milliseconds (but gets stretched out to a full 30 seconds here). Peter Hyams is one of my least favourite directors but even by his low standards he's slacking on this one. It's a crashing bore of a monster flick.

A researcher at Chicago's Natural History Museum returns from South America with crates containing his findings. When they arrive at the museum without the owner there appears to be very little inside. Police discover gruesome remains on the cargo ship that brought the crates, and then another murder in the museum itself. Investigating the murder is Lt. D'Agosta who enlists the help of Dr. Green at the museum. Unknown to both though, there is a large creature roaming the museum, which is preparing itself for a benefit reception......The relic hasn't aged very well since the last time I saw this back in 1998, and the script doesn't hold up either. The film is basically Night At The Museum for adults, and about as entertaining.It's by the numbers stuff, museum gets dark, people get picked off every now and again, the monster isn't seen until the very end, and only two teachers from Kindergarten Cop and Tom Sizemore can save the day.If this were made today, it'd be released straight to Blu Ray and vanish without a trace.The years have been really unkind to this film.Not as good as I remember.

People don't hate this movie because it has bad effects, or bad acting. They hate it because it didn't stick too well to the book. But I don't know what they're complaining about It's an entertaining movie, and a lot of people hated it, and i just don't understand why. It's about a monster that runs rampid in a museum, and eats people's brains, that's it. If you wanted something more, like the meaning of life, you're not going to get it. But anyway, the film centers on a museum, which has just spent money it didn't really have on a new exhibit called superstitions. Needless to say, opening night is of the utmost importance, but the problem is, people are starting to be killed. By what, no one knows, but the murders are way to grizzly and gruesome to be human. So now it's up to Leiutnenant D'Agosta and a museum employee named Margo Green to find out what is causing the murders, and put an end to it before the opening night of the big exhibition. But despite their attempts, they find no murderer, and the exhibition opening still happens. At this point we've gathered that the killer requires nutrients from a plant that it cannot find. It just so happens that the Hyptothalamus region of the human brain also contains those nutrients. So The murderer, or monster,r because if you haven't figured out that it's a monster at this point, there's nothing to be said to you, takes to eating the museum employees brains to receive enough nutrients to survive. And with the big Exhibition opening with hundreds of people, it's pretty much a big smorgesborg for the creature. So when it attacks, a group of people get trapped in the building by a security system run awry. And now It's up to D'Agosta to get them out to safety. I'm not really going to explain anymore of the plot, because doing so would give away the twist ending, and it's also like trying to explain quantum physics in a few paragraphs that i'm far too lazy to type. But what I really want to talk about, is the comparison between the book and the movie. The Book I felt left something to be desired with the end, and a few scenes were just uneventful, like when the swat team goes into the museum. But the movie does a good job of giving the scenes more life. But it also wrote off a few good characters, and had an ending that was completely different to from the book(But i prefer the movie ending to the book ending). The monster is well made, and the movie is just good. My opinion could be different if i read the book before seeing the movie, but the only reason i wanted to read the book is because i saw the movie. Overall, a good movie that strayed pretty far from the path set by the book, but did a good job with giving some scenes better life then the book did. So I say, go check it out, see for yourself what you think.