Review of The Relic (1997) by Julian T — 10 Nov 2011

Mindless mayhem!

A Detroit museum receives a shipment of bizarre crates, containing an old tribal relic and some leaves which have some strange fungus on it. That night a security guard named Frederick Ford (Jophery C.Brown) is literally torn to pieces by a giant monster. Homicide detective Vincent D'Agosta (Tom Sizemore) and evolutionary biologist Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller) team up and discover that the leaves contained some sort of unidentifiable fungus that systematically mutated into a wild monster. D'Agosta insists that the museum should close its doors but the Museum doesn't need any bad publicity and are planning to hold a gala for the Mayor (Robert Lesser) his wife (Diane Robbin) and so they try and sweep the incident under the carpet. Lt. D'Agusto can't stop the gala from going ahead, the bad news for the guests is that there seems to be a giant mutated creature running around that needs to eat human brains for a particular hormone it survives on.

"The Relic" offers some surprisingly nasty killings (numerous decapitations) and vicious monster effects (we have Stan Winston to thank for that). Horror fans will appreciate the extended and atmospherically filmed sequences in the museum catacombs, showing how a small group of survivors try to escape the monster evolved specifically to decapitate people!

The Good Points: The museum set was magnificent with its various artifacts and relics, the autopsy scene and the bodies on the drifting ship were good.

Overall I enjoyed it but I found the constant darkness distracting and made the film difficult to watch at times, still worth a watch but these flaws stop it from becoming a classic modern horror film that it could have been.