Even the most jaded horror movie addicts may find themselves
squirming in parts of Peter Hyams’ murky but well-made creature feature “The
Relic” (*** out of ****) starring Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore. Meanwhile the faint of heart may want to reconsider
enduring this experience. You’ll lose
count of the number of severed heads.
You’ll also lose count of the number of times that the filmmakers dare
you to accompany heroes and victims down a catacomb of spooky hallways. Special effects wizard Stan Winston has
created a huge, slimy, lizard critter with tusks for “The Relic” that would
give “Alien,” “Predator,” and those “Jurassic Park” raptors a run for their
money.
“The Relic” is basically a haunted house chiller. Most of its grisly action occurs inside a
creepy Chicago museum, within scores of shadowy corridors, labs, and
staircases. A dinosaur reptile of
amazing agility prowls these premises and feasts on flesh. Mainly, this hybrid monster tears your head
off and munches a chunk of your brains.
The melodramatic script pays homage to scary sagas such as “Jaws,” “Alien,”
and “Jurassic Park.” Penelope Ann Miller
plays a dedicated but cute evolutionary biologist who pedals a bicycle to work
and worries about who’ll fund her research.
She shares many of Ripley’s heroic characteristics from the “Alien”
franchise, except Penelope doesn’t perform a strip tease for the monster. She keeps her clothes on and relies on her
wits to outsmart the creature. Burly Tom
Sizemore abets her as a superstitious Windy City cop. He wants to close the museum, but the mayor
needs it open for a gala fundraiser.
Naturally, the monster crashes the gala and heads roll. When the monster isn’t terrifying the rich,
the museum becomes an obstacle course. The monsters shuts down the power, and
the wealthy patrons find themselves trapped in the dark, rained on by fire
sprinklers. “The Relic” aspires to be more
than just a horror movie. The worst
thing about “The Relic” is its surplus of plot.
What might have been a small horror movie turns into not only a
big-scale scary movie, but also a disaster movie. The film opens with a jungle
witchcraft scene that is supposed to frighten but winds up being
incomprehensible. The filmmakers then
build the plot and introduce their array of characters before the finally
unleash the beast.
Part of the time the scenarists clobber us with a load of
scientific, computer gibberish that makes the movie sound realistic. Interestingly, everything that the monster
devours becomes part of its DNA and guides it behavior.
Peter Hyams lights the museum as if it were
the space ship in “Alien.” Hyams, who
helmed “Outland” and “Running Scared,” aims to scare the daylights out of
you. He resorts to every tried-and-true
truck to elicit paranoia and hype suspense.
If you aren’t family with how horror movies manipulate their audiences,
you may find some scenes in “The Relic” a little intense. Predictability, of course, paralyzes the plot
because Hyams spends too much time trying to be like other horror movies so
that it breaks little new ground. But
the effects may be gruesome enough that you forget the formula that the story
follows. Hyams gets great help from
composer John Debney whose tense, dramatic orchestral score heightens the
tension.
“The Relic” qualifies as a good horror movie boosted by
glossy production values. This chiller
is worth seeing at least once while you’re searching for a genuine classic.
