The relic

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Movie
German title The relic
Original title The Relic
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1997
length approx. 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Peter Hyams
script Amy Holden Jones ,
John Raffo ,
Rick Jaffa ,
Amanda Silver
production Gale Anne Hurd ,
Sam Mercer
music John Debney
camera Peter Hyams
cut Steven Kemper
occupation

The Relic (original title The Relic ) is an American horror film directed by Peter Hyams from 1997 based on the novel Relic - Museum of Fear by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child . Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore can be seen in the leading roles . The film opened in German cinemas on May 1, 1997.

action

The anthropologist John Whitney of the Museum of Natural History in Chicago is investigating the customs of the newly discovered Zinziera Indian tribe in Brazil when he is confronted with a terrifying legend. The tribesmen give him a soup. A short time later he sneaks aboard a merchant ship that is on its way to Chicago.

Months pass before a ship full of corpses with brains torn from the skull arrives in the port of Chicago . Chicago Police Homicide Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta takes on the investigation with his assistant Hollingsworth.

When an upcoming exhibition on superstition at the Field Museum of Natural History is overshadowed by the murder of a security guard who is also missing part of his brain, the policemen go to the museum and meet the evolutionary biologist Dr. Margo Green, who is researching some fungal leaves that Whitney sent from South America. These seem to have the ability to alter their DNA .

Against D'Agosta's will, museum director Ann Cuthbert lets the opening gala of the superstition exhibition take place, as many sponsors and also the mayor are expected there. Just as the celebration begins and Cuthbert tells the guests about the Zinziera's belief in the mystical devil god Kothoga, Margo and her doctoral supervisor, Dr. Frock the truth behind the legend: When the Zinziera wage war, they feed the mushroom to an animal, which then turns into a murderous monster that needs the hormones produced in the human hypothalamus to survive. When the animal has killed all enemies (and thus has no more food), it dies.

Now such a monster is on the move in the museum and promptly attacks the guests of the opening gala. Panic breaks out and people flee, but a dozen of them - including the mayor - are trapped in the main hall with Hollingsworth. While he tries to get his charges through the former coal tunnel to safety, D'Agosta and Green set about destroying the monster that has meanwhile killed Frock. Its sensitivity to temperature fluctuations should be the solution. After an unsuccessful attempt to freeze it, Margo lures the monster, which she recently identified as a mutation of Whitney, into a storage room full of exhibits soaked in alcohol and sets a fire there in which the monster dies. Hollingsworth has now brought almost all of his charges to safety, and D'Agosta finds Margo unharmed in a fireproof container.

background

As in many horror films, the monster can only really be seen in the last third of the film. In addition to dramaturgical considerations, problems during the filming are decisive, since the visual concept of the creature was not even finished when the filming began. In South America there is the mythical creature Mapinguari , which bears a certain resemblance to the monster in the film.

Economically, The Relic was not a success for Paramount Pictures ; the film barely grossed the $ 40 million production cost at the box office. Over time - and through marketing on video and DVD - it quickly became a modern classic among friends of the genre. He has also received many genre awards such as the Stockholm Film and Fantasy Award . A continuation of the film after the continuation of the novel Reliquary (German title: Attic ) has been planned for a long time, but nothing specific is known yet. At times Peter Hyams expressed interest in taking over the direction again.

Differences from the novel

The film adaptation differs significantly from the literary model. While the novel is set in the American Museum of Natural History in New York , the film is located in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago . In the novel, the indigenous people are referred to as Kothoga, in the film the monster bears this name, while the name Mbwun does not appear there. The monster appears in the novel as a mixture of reptile and primate with human intelligence. There are also big differences in the characters and the plot.

people

With Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast and the reporter Bill Smithback, two key characters from the novel are missing from the film. Smithback was completely canceled and instead of the duo Pendergast and Vincent d'Agosta only the latter was used. The role of assistant, which d'Agosta holds in the novel, takes on Hollingsworth in the film. The name John Whitney is transferred to the anthropologist working in Brazil, who is called Whittlesey in the novel. Ian Cuthbert is transformed into the female character Ann Cuthbert in the film adaptation and Gregory Kawakita is renamed Greg Lee. Dr. Frock dies in the film, while he survives in the book and also plays an important role in the sequel Attic .

action

Essential parts of the novel are missing in the film. For example, the viewers do not learn anything about Whittlesey's diary, which Margo first made to examine the plant fibers. In the film, however, she is already working with the interpolator (which is called the correct extrapolator in the novel) when the boys are just being murdered. In the novel, a scared and clumsy policeman is responsible for the power failure and the resulting failure of the electronic security system, which is simply portrayed in the film as a technical defect. The conflicts between FBI agents Pendergast and Coffey and between journalist Smithback and PR boss Rickman are also missing after the people involved have been deleted. Other parts of the plot are presented in different chronology or falsified. The refugees in the basement, who in the novel only reach a ladder when the water level rises, simply go through a door in the film. There are two completely different scenes in the final battle with the monster. In the novel, Pendergast shoots the monster after a hint from Margo, in the film Margo kills the creature with fire.

Reviews

  • James Berardinelli from Reel Views wrote about the film: “This horror / science fiction amalgamation seems like nothing more ambitious than a bad reworking of elements from Aliens, Species, Jaws, and Predator.” German: “This mixture of horror and science fiction works like nothing more than a bad reuse of elements from Aliens , Species , Great White Shark and Predator ”.
  • The film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel praised the film as "surprisingly entertaining". The film is clever in its ability to combine horror and disaster film elements. If you like special effects, the film is a lot of fun.

Film awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film review by J. Berardinelli (English)
  2. ↑ Review by Roger Eberts (English)