Sadly Over-hyped

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Not a total waste of time as so many ScyFi channel films. The film's biggest downfalls are the poor CGI (something one might expect the ScyFi channel to be particularly good at given the genre, but actually are very bad at) and so-so directing and scripting.It always amazes me that films which portray the demonic as such powerful and real forces give such short shrift to the powers of Good. It strikes me as rather lame that film makers have the demon win when confronted with a person of true faith standing on their faith against such. If the demon exists, so too must God and his angels. And yet, this film has devote monks becoming possessed flesh-eaters in the blink of an eye, a knight of the Crusade "poisoned" by a splinter from a piece of the "true cross" and converted into a demonic monster with flailing tentacles, cursed nails stronger than a holy relic (a piece of the cross) and the blood of Christ, and a demon immune to the Bible and a crucifix but at the same time subject to the power of an Islamic symbol. One of the characters is an indentured laborer who confesses to being a non-believer to a knight of the Crusade. Subsequently, she revises her position to one of belief. Other critics spurn her conversion, but I have to ask: given an out-right blatant proof of the existence of Evil in the form of a demon, I think that most atheists or agnostics would find faith in a deity of some form rather quickly. Kind of like the old adage: their are no atheists in foxholes ...The acting is okay, and Fain plays the lead well. Alyy Khan does a pretty decent job in his role as supporting actor. I did find the reasoned approach to the coexistence of their different faiths to be a pleasant change. I am just not sure of how realistic it was for the time. It isn't unreasonable that a crusader returning to England after years of battle might be weary of the acrimony back and forth and to have a more wizened approach, but Khan's character has no basis for such given his position and background in such a strongly indoctrinated faith.Given the portrayed invulnerability of the demon to normal weapons, it was a decent plot ploy that the blood of Christ would serve as a weapon enhancer to make normal weapons effective against the demon. However, the piece of the cross did not ooze such all the time so how did they gather enough to coat the weapons? Likewise, all this time the demon has been following the piece of the cross, even transporting it back to the good guys when they try to bury it and leave it behind, and yet when it is shoved in the face of the demon, the demon is blown to bits. And if the relic is so powerful against the demon, why is it that the knight can't remove the cursed nails from it? The nails are more powerful than the demon? Very weak.

The idea was interesting, so I was willing to forgive the budget quality if it was a watchable movie at the least. Apart from this odd if very interesting idea and the good performances of James Frain and Alyy Khan, Dark Relic was anything but. Apart from these two performances, the rest of the acting is at best mediocre. A number of things didn't help them at all. The characters are little more than obnoxious stereotypes that we learn nothing about, while the dialogue constantly has a very awkward feel to it. There is nothing exciting in the story at all, which suffers further from a complete lack of coherence. The special effects are of really poor standard, I wasn't expecting high art of course considering the budget but these looked like examples of somebody not even trying. The camera work is hackneyed, while the direction is flat and the monster is very underused and as far from menacing as you can come. So all in all, dull and cheap, essentially a pretty poor but slightly redeemable SyFy movie that doesn't have much if any kind of value. 2/10 Bethany Cox

I actually liked the story of that movie. The movie had some points of thrill, but like the other reviews already said: The movie was destroyed by lousy and cheap so-called "Special-Effects" that sometimes had the quality of a mid-nineties-computer-game. The acting of James Frain, whom I first saw in "The Tudors" and of Alyy Khan was good (an probably kind of saved the movie from disaster). I almost felt sorry for them spoiling their names for this movie. The rest of the acting was average. I do not regret watching this movie (maybe because I like these middle-age crusade-type of movie). I would not watch it again and I would not really recommend it to any friends. This movie really could have been better with some up-to-date special-effects and if it would have been put into scene a little bit better.

I give this flick a two because of the good idea. Finding a part of the real cross and being attacked by demons, could have been a good story.But ... At the first pictures of the movie you see crusaders after the war in clean cloth, with clean faces and fingernails. Well thats the point where you have to realize that it will be something like a lame Scifi channel production. But it gets worse.The discussions are what makes this movie really unrealistic. From the beginning of the movie everybody permanently tells the crusaders that the crusade maybe was a bad idea and it may not have been a holy war. When this the first time happens i got a smile on my face because i thought: All right heretic, that were your last words and now the slaughtering starts. But the crusaders in this movie are real open minded. They are open to discuss everything. Its allowed to call the crusade a bad idea all the time, its allowed to tell them that muslims and christians are basically the same religion and it is also allowed to tell them that Jesus was not the son of god. They are fine with all of that. The Muslim warrior which joins them later is also open for all this questions. The crusaders and the Muslim warrior do not have any problems with each other because ... the war is over. Oh, by the way. Now and then some bad made CGI creatures appear and disturb their discussion.I did not watch the movie to the end. If i want to see a hypocritical debate about religion which includes some ugly creatures, then i just will watch the next TV debate about this subject. So what is this all about? It seems like someone wanted to make a movie about religious tolerance between muslims, cristians and atheists based on the example of a happy group of crusaders and Muslim warriors. Well, good for him. But next time he should show this to his left wing lesbian vegetarian discussion group in private and do not publish it and steal 1,5 hours of the live time of fantasy movie fans.