THE RELIC (1997) A film review by Nick Schaden Copyright 1997 Nick Schaden
What is with the horror/thriller genre of today? Either we have movies that try to spoof horror (i.e. "Scream") with moderately enjoyable results, or the countless number of movies that actually try to freak us out, with for the most part, far too predictable and almost laughable results. "The Relic" throws us an interesting plot and pretty sweet special effects - big potential. However, by the end of the movie, all the glory that "The Relic" tries to achieve nose dives.
The plot of "The Relic" (contrary to all the scientific mumbo jumbo you hear throughout the movie) is rather simple: A mutated monster that kills humans to stay alive has been accidentally sent to the Field Museum in Chicago with disastrous results. An attractive evolutionary biologist (Penelope Ann Miller) and a veteran homicide cop (Tom Sizemore) both work apart, then together to stop and destroy this monster. The plot actually stays intact pretty well for a horror flick, and I enjoyed it, it was quite original. To boot, the "scariness" of the movie starts slow and picks up speed gradually, with satisfying results. In addition, a few of the "nail biting" hooks work relatively well, and the cinematography does these sparse scenes justice.
Unfortunately, about halfway through the movie when the tension really heats up, the movie tanks. First problem: the acting. Penelope Ann Miller turns suddenly from a good role as bad boy biologist into yet another stereotyped "woman-victim", meaning she spends the rest of the movie screaming and running in high heels and a tight black dress. The other star, Tom Sizemore hits rock bottom too. Sizemore starts as the hard-boiled cop he seems to play well in many movies (i.e. "True Romance") but soon goes WAY over the top, reduced to doing little but barking orders and using the "f" word a lot. Second problem: the people in the movie are just too stupid. Naturally, when all hell breaks loose nobody except Ann Miller and Sizemore have any strategy, the people just run around and become puppy chow for the monster. Even the two stars don't exactly have a winning formula: Instead of just trying to escape right away from the museum, they decide that "this f**king thing has to be DESTROYED first" and spend much of the movie trying to find the origin of this monster. It all seemed quite trivial to me, just a pretty lame plot excuse to have some more "near-miss" thriller scenes. Last problem: The ending. After what seemed to be a very confusing and overblown "special effects extravaganza" final showdown, in what seems a matter of seconds the entire movie wraps itself up far too quickly.
In the end, "The Relic" seemed like a horror/thriller movie almost ready to crack out of its shell, but unfortunately became another heavily flawed flick that dies half way out of the starting gate.
Nick's Rating: -2
*** Movies rated from -4 (worst) to +4 (best), 0 = average movie ***
-- Nick Schaden Send your comments to: cpunut@uslink.net Check out all of Nick's reviews at: http://uslink.net/~cpunut/movies.html
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