Review of The Relic (1997) by Whit W — 31 Dec 2012

"The Relic" is a tough one to grade. On the one hand, it's a decent story about a creature brought back from an expedition to Brazil. I won't give away the coolest part of the movie, but when Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller) says "I know ___ you are..." it makes a lot of the not so good moments a little more tolerable.

Let's spend a second or two on the characters. Dr. Green, played by Miller, is about as unsympathetic as they come through the first half of the movie. She finally started to win me over once she warmed up to Lt. D'Agosta. Lt. D'Agosta is a hard-as-nails cop with a heart of gold, played by the always entertaining Tom Sizemore. The rest of the cast are the typical, hackneyed gritty cops or snooty rich elite or insufferable, know-it-all scientists. I mostly hated all of them which is good because most of them were killed, with significant gore, by the ancient beast.

The monster itself is original and is probably the best thing about the movie, when you can actually see it. And that just happens to be the most disappoining thing, too. There either wasn't enough of a budget to light this movie or they were purposely trying to hide shoddy effects. I didn't think the effects were too bad so I'll just state that the whole movie was darker than it needed to be. The characters were constantly using flashlights. You can't see much of anything for the last third of the movie. I suppose it could have been the Netflix streaming copy that I was watching, but I doubt it.

With a few more lights and a little more monster, this could have been a very good Horror flick.