The opening of the film is incoherent, so I'll just skip to the meat of the story. A Chicago museum is planning a grand event to open their new exhibit(dubbed Superstition) when a security guard is ripped apart. The police shut down the museum to conduct an investigation. After finding and killing a crazy man in the museum's basement the town Mayor decides to let the grand opening go on despite the warnings of one Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, who believes there may be a connection to the mysterious deaths aboard a cargo ship that was recently brought to port only a few miles away. With the help of evolutionary biologist Margo Green, his suspicion is confirmed. It seems the ship was carrying a pair of crates from Brazil, sent to the museum by anthropologist John Whitney. D'Agosta and Green make this discovery a bit late; the gala has begun and there's something lurking in the coal tunnels beneath the museum.
That sounds like a recipe for a decent, derivative monster movie, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it doesn't work for one main reason, and his name is Peter Hyams. While a competent director, Hyams will most times act as his own DP(director of photography), and therein lies the problem. He seems to think that keeping the lights as low as possible is an acceptable way to build tension. It's one thing to use dim lighting on a film(shadows can be very effective), but entirely another to keep the lighting so minimal as to eliminate shadow detail. The Relic isn't dark, it's black. There are no shadows; outside of direct light there is no detail whatsoever. Even scenes set inside the museum offices are too dim(and that's before the electricity has been cut). There are too many scenes where, despite there being several people in frame, the only things you can see are the flashlights they're holding. I could go on about this forever, but you get the idea. All this darkness is a real shame, too, because the always reliable Stan Winston has created another terrific monster. Note to producers: stop allowing Hyams to be his own DP!
On the other hand, there's the story. The opening attempts to pass on some information about Whitney and how exactly the creature gets to the museum. Throughout the film there are more pieces of the puzzle, but only enough to figure out what happened, not why. Evidently, the novel supplied a reason for the tribe's(in the opening sequence) actions, but all you can deduce from the film is that Whitney was simply participating in the ritual for the purpose of research. From what little I've heard about the novel, they had an ulterior motive.
To be fair, the film does have some good scenes(even if you can't see much of what's happening). The effects during the final chase are superb, as is the creature in general(again, what you can see of it).
Overall, there's not much to be attracted to in The Relic. I've always found films like this to be better when the sets, characters, monsters, and mutilations thereof are visible. So, if you're in the mood for an old-fashioned, gory, B-grade monster movie I recommend trying its 1999 counterpart, Virus. There's little worth watching here.
That sounds like a recipe for a decent, derivative monster movie, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it doesn't work for one main reason, and his name is Peter Hyams. While a competent director, Hyams will most times act as his own DP(director of photography), and therein lies the problem. He seems to think that keeping the lights as low as possible is an acceptable way to build tension. It's one thing to use dim lighting on a film(shadows can be very effective), but entirely another to keep the lighting so minimal as to eliminate shadow detail. The Relic isn't dark, it's black. There are no shadows; outside of direct light there is no detail whatsoever. Even scenes set inside the museum offices are too dim(and that's before the electricity has been cut). There are too many scenes where, despite there being several people in frame, the only things you can see are the flashlights they're holding. I could go on about this forever, but you get the idea. All this darkness is a real shame, too, because the always reliable Stan Winston has created another terrific monster. Note to producers: stop allowing Hyams to be his own DP!
On the other hand, there's the story. The opening attempts to pass on some information about Whitney and how exactly the creature gets to the museum. Throughout the film there are more pieces of the puzzle, but only enough to figure out what happened, not why. Evidently, the novel supplied a reason for the tribe's(in the opening sequence) actions, but all you can deduce from the film is that Whitney was simply participating in the ritual for the purpose of research. From what little I've heard about the novel, they had an ulterior motive.
To be fair, the film does have some good scenes(even if you can't see much of what's happening). The effects during the final chase are superb, as is the creature in general(again, what you can see of it).
Overall, there's not much to be attracted to in The Relic. I've always found films like this to be better when the sets, characters, monsters, and mutilations thereof are visible. So, if you're in the mood for an old-fashioned, gory, B-grade monster movie I recommend trying its 1999 counterpart, Virus. There's little worth watching here.