The Relic is a 1997 American monster-horror film shot and directed by Peter Hyams and based on the best-selling 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, James Whitmore, and Brian Steele in his feature film debut. In the film, a detective and a biologist try to defeat a South American monstrous reptilian creature which is on a killing spree in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.