The Mummy Review

"Whatever's in there has been safely hidden for two thousand years...This isn't a tomb....it's a prison."


The Mummy is the latest franchise to be based around the ancient horror of the Ancient Egyptian Mummies coming to life to haunt the living. This incarnation of the franchise also marks the entry point to Universals joint cinematic universe being called the "Dark Universe" (sounds scary doesn't it!) whereby monsters from classic Universal films will co-exist in the same world (will this succeed?.. that is yet to be seen). The Mummy was directed by Alex Kurtzman and stars the likes of Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe and Jake Johnson. The film itself follows the rise of a cursed Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) as she is risen from her prison tomb to capture her rescuer played by Tom Cruise (won't spoil why!) and inflict her will on the world.

The Mummy franchise has taken many forms over the years, from classic horror incarnations on the franchise to the quirky more comedic adventure films starring Brendan Frazer, so this incarnation had the opportunity to be new and fresh but the films tone seems to take the horror elements from the classic franchise, whilst also trying to break in jokes that would be found in the Brendan Fraser franchise (the comedic elements really don't feel right here!). Whilst the tone of the film is a bit of a mess there are some good elements that need mentioning. The opening of the film is really good with the mythological back story of Sofia Boutella's cursed Ahmanet being a standout moment with some great visual effects and the introduction to Tom Cruise's Nick Morton is both exciting and action packed (shame the character doesn't deliver!). There are also some good set pieces, the opening action set piece is both exciting and entertaining and the tense plane crash (seen in the trailers) also delivers some gravity defining effects. One of the key elements to discuss in these types of the films is the use of horror elements. The Mummy relies of using jump scares to quickly scare its audience, there are times when these jump scares really work (trust me they do!) but there was nothing that was truly scary in this film and nothing that really played on the mind at all. With a film that is based around the Ancient Egyptian Mummies maybe more emphasis should of been given to truly scare audiences rather than offering cheap jump scares.

Whilst the film lacked the scares that I expected or hoped to expect in the film, it also lacked developed characters, whilst Sofia Boutella's Egyptian Ahmanet and in my opinion Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyll certainly deliver in terms of character development, characters like Tom Cruise's Nick Morton feel underdeveloped, and Cruise falls into his stereotypical typecast action hero with hardly any backstory, so as an audience member there was hardly any connection with the character. I would also like to point out that Jake Johnson's Chris Vail was completely unnecessary and the comedic sequences involving the character after the plane crash (spoilers!) felt out of place and dampened the overall tone of the film. I also want to point out that the pace of the film is really fast, too fast in my opinion, it just felt rushed, the film tries to force in lots of different locations and events over such a short amount of time that as the audience member you spend most of the time jumping between location to location, trying to catch up on the film so by the time you get to the finale set piece you're not really interested in any new location or what's really happening. In my opinion the film could of done itself a favour by slowing down the pace allowing characters to be fleshed out and also building some truly intense and scary sequences that the film lacked.  

Overall there are definitely some good aspects about the film, but the lack of developed characters and a lack of true scares ruined the film for me, that is not to say that everyone will be disappointed by this film, I am sure lots of people will like it but don't get your hopes up too high. Whilst I am still optimistic about Universals Dark Universe it really needs to up its game which I am pretty sure they will do, so let's wait for the next couple of releases from the Dark Universe to really from a opinion on it.

Verdict: 3 out of 5 stars