Relic (1996)

I've just finished reading the novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child -- a pair of very readable hacks -- on which this film is based and didn't remember the movie which I saw some years ago being much like the book -- so I had another look.  Of course the simple answer is that it is nothing like the book having dropped certain major characters that appear in several of the writers' works and turning the whole shooting match into some sort of creature-feature gorefest.  Well, what did I expect -- I should know by now that movies are seldom faithful to their source material.  So judging it as a film, how was it?  So-so is the verdict -- I like a bit of gore and decapitations as much as the next guy, but if I wasn't familiar with the writers' original concepts, I probably would have had little idea of what was going on.  Rather than a number of well-defined characters in the novel, the story depended on biologist Penelope Ann Miller and cop Tom Sizemore to carry the action -- not the most charismatic pair on the block.