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The Relic
1997 110 min Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, United States of America R 18+
★6.5
Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Science Fiction
Director: Peter Hyams
🎭 Based on
«Relic»
byDouglas Preston
Trailers
Description
A homicide detective teams up with an evolutionary biologist to hunt a giant creature that is killing people in a Chicago museum.
Budget:
$60M
US Gross:
$33.96M
Worldwide:
$33.96M
Starring
Penelope Ann Miller
Actor
Tom Sizemore
Actor
Linda Hunt
Actor
Awards
Saturn Awards 1997
— Best Horror Film
Saturn Awards 1997
— Best Actress
Key opinion
The Relic is a polarizing creature feature that effectively utilizes a claustrophobic museum setting to build tension, yet it struggles with a thin, unoriginal screenplay. While fans of the monster movie genre appreciate its atmospheric lighting and practical creature design, literary purists and some critics find the adaptation of the source material to be simplified, poorly paced, and lacking the depth of the original novels.
| Production | The creature design of the Kothoga is praised for being a scarily original and effective practical hybrid of animatronics and CGI. | |
| Direction | Director Peter Hyams successfully crafts a tense, suspenseful atmosphere by effectively utilizing the claustrophobic confines of a dark museum. | |
| Screenplay | The screenplay is widely criticized as a derivative and simplistic reduction of the source material, often losing the nuance of the original novels. | |
| Adaptation | Fans of the original Preston & Child novels express frustration with the adaptation's character changes and the significant omission of key figures like Agent Pendergast. | |
| Acting | Opinions on the lead performances are divided; some find Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller to be adequate or solid anchors, while others describe the acting as over-the-top or unconvincing. | |
| Cinematography | The visual presentation is polarizing; viewers enjoy the moody, atmospheric use of darkness, while others find the film consistently too dark to follow the action effectively. |