by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 11, 2008

"The Relic" just plain sucked.

One problem with this movie is easy to explain: There were too many corpses ("Joe, why are you sitting there not saying anything?" Joe's head falls to the floor. "EYAAAAAAAA!") But once the monster finally appears - about 70 minutes into this turkey - audiences still don't know what it was. A big grumpy bear would've been scarier.

The movie didn't even have a relic. Just a genetically-mutated half-human, half-beetle creature decapitating people with its half-beetle pincers. (Don't you hate it when one of those shows up in your museum?) It's based on a novel about a reckless museum that brings Satanic murder into the city when they exhibit a relic depicting a violent Brazilian lizard god. In the movie, the relic is replaced by the creature itself. Having surrendered the book's hints of Satanic mysticism, the film-makers seek to replace it by adding a lot of extra death. There's a creature that's somehow arrived from a foreign country running loose in the museum killing people. That's the entire plot.

You know you're in for a grim ride when a movie's only light moment comes from its coroner. That's because the coroner is played Audra Lindley, who played Mrs. Roper on "Three's Company" in the 1970s. Cheerily wielding a bone saw to identify the causes of death, she matter-of-factly dismisses all the blood and the gore. It's nice to see her, you think to yourself. But then it's back to the decapitated corpses.

Viewers don't know what the monster is, or why it's in the museum, or where in the museum it's supposed to be hiding, or - EYAAAAAAA! Another decapitated corpse! The entire move is like that. Most of the fun of a good horror film vanishes if it's not possible to identify what exactly it is that's supposed to be scary.

The actors were all fine, and I wish them all good luck in finding better projects. Unfortunately, they spend most of their time tiptoeing through dark exhibition halls and tunnels, hoping they won't get their heads chopped off. (One reviewer gave this film one star, calling it "as relentlessly violent and unpleasant as any film in recent memory.") This atrocious movie even featured Linda Hunt, the 4' 9" woman who won the Best Support Actress Oscar in 1983 for "The Year of Living Dangerously.

Ultimately "The Relic" commits one final and unforgivable sin. It's an hour and fifty minutes long.

And that's an hour and fifty minutes TOO long.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.