Subject: REVIEW: THE RELIC

From: [email-masked] (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: 13 Jan 1997 22:05:01 GMT

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
					[email-masked]