General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Relic

The Relic is a 1997 American horror and science fiction film directed by Peter Hyams, based on the 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It follows a homicide detective and an evolutionary biologist hunting a monstrous creature loose in a Chicago natural history museum during the opening night of a new exhibit.¹^•² The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, and James Whitmore, and is known for its creature effects by Stan Winston.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	Wide release January 10, 1997 by Paramount Pictures; 110 minutes, rated R³
Source	Based on the novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (New York, 1995)¹
Director	Peter Hyams, who also served as director of photography¹
Lead cast	Penelope Ann Miller as Dr. Margo Green; Tom Sizemore as Lt. Vincent D'Agosta; Linda Hunt as Dr. Ann Cuthbert; James Whitmore as Dr. Albert Frock²
Box office	Domestic gross $33,956,608 on a production budget listed at $60,000,000³
Critical scores	Metascore 55 (mixed or average, 14 reviews); Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 41%⁴^•⁵
Filming location	The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, after the American Museum of Natural History in New York declined to host production⁶

Spoilers

Premise

The story begins with a shipment of relics from a South American tribe arriving by boat in the United States with its entire crew dead. Museum scientists examine the crates, which contain only plants used as packing material, and discover too late that John Whitney, transformed after consuming fungus-infected leaves, has become an insect and lizard creature that feeds on humans.⁶^•¹⁴ The creature, called the Kothoga, has genes combining human, insect, and reptile DNA, and kills its victims by decapitating them and consuming the thalamus and pituitary glands from their skulls.⁷

The action centers on the museum's opening-night gala for a new exhibit, which the mayor insists proceed even as police become convinced the building is unsafe. When the power fails and security gates lock down, the creature stalks guests and staff through the halls and tunnels; a SWAT team sent in to rescue the patrons is slaughtered, and biologist Dr. Margo Green ultimately kills the creature.⁸^•²

Production

Direction and crew. Peter Hyams directed the film and also shot it as director of photography, working from a screenplay credited to Amy Jones, John Raffo, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver. Gale Anne Hurd and Sam Mercer produced, and John Debney composed the score.¹^•²

Location. The novel is set in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the film intended to shoot there. Paramount offered the museum a seven-figure sum, but the administration worried that a monster movie would scare children away from the museum and declined. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago accepted the production, and the film shot there, with tunnel scenes built on a Los Angeles soundstage.⁶^•⁸

Budget and schedule. Filming began in October 1995 with a planned summer 1996 release. The director lobbied Paramount for funds to film a revamped ending, and the release was pushed to October 16, 1996, then rescheduled to January 10, 1997. Bomb Report puts the budget just north of $40 million, while The Numbers lists it at $60 million.⁹^•³

Creature effects

Stan Winston and his team built three practical creatures for the film, each requiring two people to operate the head plus a crew running the electronics that moved them.⁶ The visual effects company VIFX, under supervisor Greg McMurry, completed about 50 shots, including computer-generated creature work for scenes in which the monster runs or jumps, and for the creature's six-foot tongue.¹⁰^•¹¹ The new ending was conceived during production when the director saw what the available effects could support.¹⁰

Adaptation from the novel

The film keeps the novel's core story, an anthropologist's expedition, a dead-crewed ship, crates of protein-rich plants, deaths involving the hypothalamus gland, and a creature with human intelligence loose during the gala, but condenses it substantially. The book inserts a seven-year gap between the jungle sequence and the museum sequence, includes a lengthy epilogue explaining the creature's origin, and has the museum staff partially aware of and covering up events.⁸

The most consequential change concerns characters. FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast, who leads the novel and the subsequent book series it began, does not appear in the film; most of his role is absorbed by D'Agosta, while the book's D'Agosta becomes the younger officer Hollingsworth. In the novel, Pendergast kills the creature with a shot to the eye, whereas the film gives the kill to Dr. Green. Frock dies in the film but survives in the book to appear in the sequel novel Reliquary.⁸

Reception and box office

The Relic opened at number one, debuting with $9.4 million in industry estimates and outdistancing the much-hyped Evita in its opening weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times; The Numbers records the weekend at $9,064,143 across 2,095 theaters. It finished with a domestic gross of $33,956,608, below its production budget, and three weeks before its release Scream had reset audience expectations for horror.¹²^•³^•⁹

Critical response was mixed. The film holds a Metascore of 55 and a 41% Tomatometer.⁴^•⁵ Roger Ebert gave it 3 of 4 stars, writing that "all of this is actually a lot of fun, if you like special effects and gore."⁷ Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune called it a surprisingly entertaining monster-on-the-loose picture and praised the creature, writing that it "can hold its own with the Alien."⁵^•² Detractors saw the film as derivative: the Austin Chronicle described it as assembled from spare parts of Alien, Jurassic Park, and The Ghost and the Darkness, and the Washington Post argued the novel deserved better than its adaptation by four screenwriters.⁴

It streams on Paramount+ and remains available on digital rental.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Monster and creature films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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