Boston's Alternative Source! image!
   
Feedback





R: ARCHIVE, S: REVIEWS, D: 01/09/1997,

The Relic

Performing an autopsy on yet another beheaded body, the coroner cracks, "Don't you hate someone who takes head but never gives it?" Not too funny, but 45 minutes into Peter Hyams's bland new horror flick the line was enough to have its audience in minor hysterics. A more inspiring moment comes when a group tries to escape Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry through a tunnel that has water up to everyone's waist -- everyone except Linda Hunt (The Year of Living Dangerously), who's about three feet tall. For a moment, it appears Hunt's going under, which would be doubly tragic -- not only would we lose a wonderful curator, but with a monster in close proximity, there were such better ways of dying. The monster is this ever-changing thing that begins when a nutty anthropologist sends an ancient virus back to the museum. If anyone can stop the beast, it's an obdurate cop played by George Clooney clone Tom Sizemore and an equally stubborn scientist played by Penelope Ann Miller.

The Relic is further proof: You've seen one headless man, you've seen them all. And by the end of this one, you've seen them all.

-- Mark Bazer