THE RELIC
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Peter Hyams tries his hand at horror
and instead finally makes a fun science fiction
film. If you liked IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND
SPACE there is a darn good chance you will like its
1990s successor. A stone statue from the Amazon
basin is somehow connected to a series of
beheadings in a Chicago museum. Like the novel,
the film is a patchwork of pieces from better
horror stories, but it all makes for a decent B-
picture. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
THE RELIC is based on what is apparently a fairly popular horror novel by Douglas Preston (author of the non-fiction DINOSAURS IN THE ATTIC, about the American Museum of Natural History) and horror editor Lincoln Child. The trailers for the film preceded the release by several months. That is all really something of a pity. This would be a great little film to come upon by accident, sitting in some dusty corner of the video store. Maybe this should be the second film of a drive-in double-feature, playing with something like MARS ATTACKS! The key to enjoying THE RELIC is to see it on the cheap with very little expectation. Then you would not feel you have to analyze the ideas in any great detail. This film is for the 90s what a film like TARANTULA was for the 50s, a bit of playful fun with some really dubious science. THE RELIC pastes together bits from a lot of horror and science fiction movies and gives some nice hokum explanations for how its particular monster came to be haunting a natural history museum in Chicago. If you look for it you will see the ghost ship from DRACULA or a big chunk of plot borrowed from THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Another piece of the idea comes from THE CREEPING UNKNOWN. Still, by STAR TREK standards the ideas in the film seem mostly reasonably plausible and nothing seems totally absurd. The film fails only in that it does not offer enough to satisfy the expectations for a major studio production.
A museum expedition to the Amazon Basin in Brazil has discovered some peculiar superstitions of the local Indians. They involve a statue and some other jungle artifacts that get crated up and sent to the Chicago Museum of Natural History by an explorer who later regrets sending them. At the museum the artifacts come to the attention of the research staff including a young evolutionary biologist Margo Green (played by Penelope Ann Miller) and her mentor and friend Dr. Frock (James Whitmore). But what really attracts attention is the set of beheadings that start occurring in different parts of the museum. Investigating them comes Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta (Tom Sizemore). He is asked to keep a lid on the killings because the museum is about to open a major new exhibit on superstition that will be extremely lucrative for the museum. The museum director (Linda Hunt) is planning in just a day or two to inaugurate the exhibit with a celebration, a major social event for the city government of Chicago. D'Agosta does not want the opening ceremonies for the exhibit to occur in a museum with a killer still at large somewhere in the huge system of underground chambers beneath the museum, but the museum plans to go ahead. While D'Agosta tries to find the killer, Dr. Green struggles to understand exactly what the superhuman killer is.
Penelope Ann Miller is probably the least interesting of the top- billed four actors. Tom Sizemore as the superstitious police detective is a much more interesting actor. He overcomes the distraction of his constant one-day growth of beard to put some interesting accent on his character. He is probably remembered best for the sleazy sorts he played in DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS and NATURAL BORN KILLERS. He plays his hero in much the same way and it is worth seeing the sleaziness translate into attitude. Linda Hunt and James Whitmore are both magnetic scene stealers, as is a somewhat mournful-looking dog. Director Peter Hyams's previous science fiction films have been CAPRICORN ONE, OUTLAND, 2010, and TIMECOP. Of those, only 2010 warrants even the effort of a second viewing and it was pretty stodgy. Hyams had to step over into horror to make his first reasonably enjoyable science fiction film. Even in THE RELIC he lacks the style he really needs. Hyams floods the film with false-alarm jump scenes, many highly predictable, instead of creating the feeling of tension he really needs.
Perhaps the best thing to do with this film would be to forget you ever heard of it and then rent it in two years. Barring that, go into the theater with lots of popcorn and no expectations. Then you might agree this film deserves a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews