The Relic
Peter Hyams is a very good action director, and Stan Winston is a very good creature maker, and both of them together make a very good team. But when you add in all the other elements, such as writers, composer, and photographer, The Relic becomes a mess; albeit, a very scary mess. However, this mess somehow manages to work, and provides the viewers a very horrifying time. The major disappointment I had with the movie was that there were so many stupid lines, and so many plot holes that were left. This movie has some of the cheesiest dialogue I have heard in a while.
The Relic opens in a jungle somewhere in South America. An anthropologist, John Whitney, drinks something made by the natives, and goes into convulsions. Later, he travels back to Chicago with two crates which aren't allowed in America... however, the crates do make it onto land (I didn't understand the entire beginning of this movie until I was thinking about it in my car afterwards) and are shipped to Chicago. Here, Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller), a fellow anthropologist, receives the crates at the museum where both Whitney and Green work. When she opens the crates, she finds one empty and one full of leaves (I think?). She isn't a big fan of the work that Whitney does, but she is fascinated with the leaves that she finds. She stores one of the leaves in containment and incincerates the rest.
Just a warning to everyone that reads this: the writers did a very sloppy job with the beginning of this movie, and I was confused as to what was going on up to where she stored the leaf. And that's the biggest problem with this movie: the writers (and there were four of them!) just couldn't hold everything together, and this almost destroyed the movie. If it weren't for Hyams direction, this movie would have flopped big time. In fact, this is the first movie where I've actually been repulsed by the dialogue. The writers tried too hard to be funny, and almost every one of their jokes flopped (and it wasn't the actors fault). Also, the writers left way too many plot holes gaping open. I don't really mind one or two, but this movie has about ten or more. For instance, in the end of the movie, Dr. Green climbs into a vat of flesh-eating chemicals, but comes out unscathed.
With that said, I will say that this movie is one of the scariest monster movies people will have seen in a long time. I just caught an airing of James Cameron's Aliens on TV just a while ago, and I didn't realize how scary it really was. I was terrified by it. The Relic is almost scarier than that one, and it probably will be for most viewers, but I wasn't that scared with this movie. The entire group with whom I was with was frightened to death with it, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood to see a scary movie. The thing that makes this movie scarier, than say, Scream, was that it didn't have all the humor that was mixed with the horror like in Scream. However, for me, Scream was a more suspenseful and terrifying movie than this one, probably because I actually cared for those characters. Again, the writers' problem for this movie.
As for the actual plot of The Relic, it's pretty much a monster/disaster movie. The monster in this movie, from creator Stan Winston, is very hideous, and very scary looking. It looks like a lion with slime and scales and a long tail. In fact, the big payoff is the first actual showing of the monster, and it's a very good payoff. The climactic scene of this movie was probably my favorite part of the entire thing, with its star being chased by the ugly monster around a dark museum. The final line that Green yells at the monster made me actually cheer, but I wondered why afterwards. I guess I did it because it was sort of an ironic statement and she killed the stupid thing.
The acting is one of the good points about the movie. Penelope Ann Miller is very good and refreshing as the anthropologist who first realizes what "it" is. Linda Hunt comes off very cute actually, being the shortest adult person in the movie. My brother even commented that she reminded him of the little girl who had to put up with her brother's meanness in Toy Story. Tom Sizemore is good, but comes up a little wooden as a superstitious cop (isn't that almost an oxymoron?). The best performance in the whole movie actually comes from a very small role, a coroner, played chillingly by Audra Lindley. All the actors are good, even the stupid kids who stay after in the museum, and they bring more out of their characters than they probably had to.
The Relic is rated R for extreme violence and gore, and language. THIS IS NOT FOR KIDS. In fact, they would probably have nightmares for the rest of their childhood if you let them watch this. In fact, I wouldn't even advise adults watching this movie, mostly because they might laugh at the movie for its stupid dialogue and plot holes. But if you can get by the film's first half, you're in for an adrenaline rush of pulse-pounding entertainment.