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After the great Sudden Death with JCVD trapped inside a hockey arena, Hyams continues his Die Hard narrative with The Relic... where we get Penelope Ann Miller, creature investigating cop Tom Sizemore, and a shitload of high roller dickbag guests attending a fancy high roller dickbag gala before getting trapped inside a museum with a mutated creature on a killing spree.

Big budget 90’s creature fun with some shoddy cgi as well as some great Stan Winston effects. Didn’t think it would hold up for me but it did, especially with that dope exhibit on Superstitions! When shit goes nuts in the museum and it almost turns into a disaster flick = pure Entertainment 1997 style.

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A monster gone rampant in a museum. Peter Hyams, serving as his own cinematographer, bathes this in shadow, almost to a AVP: Requiem level, but the difference lies in Hyams' nonobtrusive direction and his commitment to cheap, vicious fun. Tom Sizemore in the lead is a welcome surprise, and the final thirty minutes delivers what you want in a movie like this.

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Absolutely rips all these years later. Big screen really shows off Hyams mastery of the dark. Probably the best post ALIENS creature feature, I love it.

Review by matt lynch ★★★½ Liked

Silly, cheap, fun. All it needs to be.

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study me in a lab penelope ann miller

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Action! - The Unlikely Rumble: Hill v Hyams

Coming into this film, I was anticipating something of questionable quality and reputation. Although the poster looks cool, and having loved Hyams' previous films, I had high hopes for it.

And, yes, there is gore and everything. The story is entertaining, albeit a little muddled near the end. And, like Sudden Death, Peter attempts to make the most of this one location. Similarly, the creature built by Stan Winston looks fantastic, albeit a little too close to The Predator in its facial appearance, to the point that I believed it would be revealed at the end that both films were set in the same universe.

My main issue is with the lighting.…

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✅ 3.3 / 5 ✅ — The Relic is a 90s gem filled with cheese and solid creature horror fun.

The 1990s were a golden era for delightfully cheesy yet entertaining creature features, with standout films like Deep Rising, Mimic, Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea, and Anaconda—each offering a range of quality from "so bad it's good" to genuinely fun. Among these, The Relic shines with its straightforward horror survival plot, remarkable creature design by Stan Winston, and Tom Sizemore's portrayal of cranky lead detective D’Agosta. While the digital effects may reflect the limitations of the era, Winston's practical effects continue to impress and captivate. The action and dialogue may lean towards the cheesy side, but they strike the right…

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Serviceable bug hunt through Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History with a cut-price Ripley and a creature that's one part raptor, one part Predator, no part original. The creature goes by the Lovecraftian sounding name of Kothoga and is the incarnation of some Brazilian hellspawn with a taste for hypothalami. You don't get a good look at it till towards the end (which makes sense; you don't wanna burn your money shot up front) but the film is so damn dark it's hard to see anything at all. At least half of it takes place in pitch black tunnel systems illuminated only by wavering flashlights and the rest is just under-lit.

The main theme: Science vs Superstition, represented by Tom…

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What a treat that this was set at the Field Museum and not the American Museum of Natural History as it was written in the book! I'm a big Natural History museum fan, I go to them whenever I find one, and I truly believe the Field is one of the best in the world, a peer institution to the ones in New York, London, and Paris (The Smithsonian doesn't make the cut unless you combine more than just the Natural History Museum portion). It's always been a puzzle to me why the Shedd Aquarium is always packed to the gills (sorry) with visitors next door but the Field is usually much more sparsely attended.

Mainly filming at the Field…

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If you’re gonna spend a ton of time keeping the monster off the screen, you gotta spend that same amount of time putting something good on the screen.

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One day Peter Hyams will get the credit for producing high quality popcorn entertainment that he thoroughly deserves.

There's no doubt that his best days are well behind him - although his output has been less frequent since he made The Relic, I think the vast majority of directors would struggle to match the likes of Outland, Running Scared, The Star Chamber, Capricorn One and several others. But The Relic is yet another 1990s monster movie that has been both underrated and largely forgotten along with the likes of the splendid Lake Placid and Deep Rising.

The plot is as feeble as you would expect it to be from a film like this - some crates shipped back to America…

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ENGLISH below 🎃

"The Relic" ist ein sehr geradliniger Monsterfilm, der vielleicht ein wenig zu lange braucht, um Monster und Gore zu zeigen, aber er ist stilvoll, hat gute Schauspieler und Schauspielerinnen und wurde mit einem anständigen Budget gedreht, was man auf dem Bildschirm auch sieht. Glücklicherweise gibt es keine öde Liebesgeschichte, sondern es geht in erster Linie um Erkundung, Geheimnisse und Monster.

Wie ich schon schrieb, dauert es eine Weile, bis wir endlich die Angriffe der Monster zu sehen bekommen, aber bis dahin werden wir mit ein paar abgetrennten Körperteilen und anderen Effekten unterhalten, die zeigen, wie jemand nach der Begegnung mit dem Monster aussieht. Aber wenn es dann losgeht, gibt es einige wirklich tolle Szenen und es geht…