Based on the bestselling Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child book (all except the “the” in the title) The Relic is your typical monster movie action/horror hybrid made during the height of Hollywood’s mid-90’s CGI tinkering, except this time the setting isn’t in some far away jungle, but Chicago’s Natural History Museum. After a freight ship docks with its crew horribly slaughtered and thrown overboard, superstitious detective D’Agosta (played by a just-happy-to-be-here Tom Sizemore) is assigned to the case. Meanwhile, a mysterious crate arrives at the museum carrying tropical leaves (yes, leaves) that were gathered by an ill fated expedition into the Brazilian jungle. The crate also carried with it a monster who takes up residence inside the massive museum, feasting on (of all things) the human hypothalamus. Margo Green, played by Penelope Ann Miller with as much conviction as an out-of-work actress, is an evolutionary biologist caught up in the mayhem. This is of course only when she’s not worrying about getting her research grant, and since we’re never told what she researches in the first place, we could care less.
It’s obvious from the beginning; the film’s primary dysfunction is its laziness in the storytelling, especially when dealing with character exposition and motivation. The attempt at rounding out D’Agosta by peppering him with a tendency for superstition (he carries a lucky bullet; a bullet that didn’t kill him) and his anger over losing custody of his dog to his ex-wife, is absolutely irrelevant and does nothing for the story or his character, instead it reeks of writers Rick Jaffa, Amy Holden Jones, John Raffo and Amanda Silver’s (!) attempt at connecting to the audience quickly and with no regard for subtext or relevance. This form of exposition gets carried away even more in Margo’s introduction outside the museum, as she tells a pair of useless school kids that she’s an evolutionary biologist like the kids a) give a shit, and b) are smart enough to know what that is. This laziness also finds its way into the background plot information; scenes are seemingly staged with people standing around telling each other the plot, all without any imagination or effort (like Jurassic Park’s animation sequence), leaving the viewer with characters simply reciting paragraphs from the novel when they should be keeping their mouths shut considering there’s a three thousand pound creepy crawly stalking them.
The Relic does not know whether it wants to be a horror movie or an action thriller, even though it’s not scary enough to be the former and hopelessly devoid of any tension to merit the latter. What’s left instead are tired clichés customary to late-night B-movie schlock but without the sense of fun and shameless self parody that make those movies entertaining. Director Peter Hyams (2010, Time Cop) doesn’t do much to help the film find a strong foot hold, instead he uses the tried and true method of cutting back and forth between the “loud” bits of action to the “quiet” bits, as if that’s the only way he knows how to generate any suspense. And, what’s with all the lens flare? I know Hyams likes to work as his own cinematographer but please Pete, cut it out! Overall, The Relic is a derivative mess that never goes beyond convention and ultimately treats itself way too seriously to be any fun at all.
Richard Saad
© Cinephile Magazine, 2006