Review of The Relic (1997) by Tom T — 12 Jan 2008

Reviewing a movie like Relic is difficult. It's both good and bad, but on totally different levels. Is it a good movie, no, not at all really. But it also passes as a very decent monster flick.

The plot, in a nut shell is about an anthropologist from the Chicago Natural history museum who find something in south africa and decides to ship it up. Of course, the ship the crate was on is found floating around lake Michigan six weeks later, it's entire crew dead. But, some of the crates still made it to the museum and pretty soon people are disappearing or dieing or just in pieces. And, because there's a gala event going on, the museum can't be shut down. I think you can figure the rest out. The movie unfolds like a really good B movie. The acting is full of cliches and the characters are run of the mill, but honestly who cares. Tom Sizemore plays Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, and can't decide whether to take the role seriously or not, he does a fine job though. The weak link is Penelope Ann Miller as Dr. Margo Green. She might be the greatest on screen scientist I've ever seen as she looks like she's struggling to read big scientific words of the index cards she has taped to her palm.

One thing Relic does get right is pacing and mood. 1997 was the year people started throwing special effects in movies like rap stars wear bling. If you've seen movies like Spawn you know at this time, fx were not up to snuff and by todays standard look plain old aweful. This is Relic's strong point, it knows what not to show you, kinda. The golden rule of horror is that it's all about what you don't see rather than what you see (a message movies like Hostel have gone right on without) and Relic does a pretty good job of not showing it's hand.

Even when the monster is revealed, we never see it in plain light, always basked in shadow or something to that effect. This works in the movies favor, especially do to the poor creature design. The film does a good job of building up suspense until you finally see the damn thing and it makes you want to laugh. It's as though the design team just pitched a bunch of things they thought looked kinda scary, photoshopped them together and threw it up on the screen. Hollywood had not, at this time, discovered that hairy monsters aren't scary. If H.G. Geiger had drawn up the Alien as a fur ball, they probably would have gone in another direction. And, since the Alien is pretty much the standard for epic monsters, you should take what you see and attempt to go in your own direction.

In the end, Relic is a run little monster movie. Does it do anything to reinvent the genre, no. But it's horror, it doesn't need reinventing. The acting is pretty bad and the dialog felt like it had been cut and pasted out of Where's Waldo books, but it managed to be pretty decent. I also have a bias for bad horror films, but this one actually landed in the upper percentile of mediocrity. Scary, no. Effecting, sometimes. Entertaining, very much so, and for a movie with the tag line "The next evolution in terror", you can't ask for much else.