Review of The Relic (1997) by Jimmy P — 19 May 2009

Relic is, by and large, your typical big budget B-Movie creature feature except that it has somewhat ore interesting storyline than most. Sadly too much time is spent developing the plot and not enough time is spent on the action and the creature. The film doesn't really kick in until 60mins are up but once it does it's great entertainment with excellent effects from the legendary Stan Winston.

The plot revolves around leaves used by an ancient South American tribe that are laced with a fungus containing extraordinary amounts of hormones usually found in the human hypothalamus. These leaves are found by an anthropologist and shipped to the Chicago museum. Little do the people in the museum know that anything that eats this leaves begins to grow huge and slowly turn into a reptile. Interesting enough setup but sadly the first hour plays out almost like a serial killer film with our rough detective looking for the killer. this would have been fine if they hadn't already shown us that the killer was in fact a monster! All suspense is lost so they should have just skipped straight to the creature action. The characters are mostly ok except for one annoying character who ha s much longer lifespan than we would hope. Acting is good and there are some funny lines in there.

The first hour really stops this from being a great B-Movie, more time should have been spent on action. Decent entertainment though.