The reason why films with huge monsters are so worn-out nowadays is because we have seen so many of these menaces since the 50's that we hardly find believable that someone runs or screams if he or she knows that a big monster is on the rampage. The Relic fixes that matter with a clever idea; the characters don't really know what they are facing. This was what made great all the monster movies in the past.
Peter Hyams with The Relic delivers the necessary amount of scares and also generates some real suspense, and construct the ambient of museums and archeology correctly.
Both Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller are great here, and it is a real mature detail that the script doesn't force a romantic involvement between them. This kind of details may appear to be useless but they actually allow the scriptwriters to be more creative. In that aspect Vincent D'Agosta (Sizemore) is really an unusual hero, plenty of flaws he certainly is not the all-ready for action cop we'll expect, and Dr. Margo Green (Miller) is the same case but as sidekick.
The movie doesn't let the viewer take a breath, and has some unexpected revelation and some well achieved gory moments but not abusive. A sample of what were monster movies before the coming of things like Anaconda and its clones.
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