Review: The Mummy (2017)
I could offer a million reasons why I decided to check out The Mummy reboot; I like Tom Cruise, I was interested to see how a modern day Universal Monster Movie held up, I had nothing better to do for 2 hours. But in truth I think it comes down to sheer morbid curiosity, could this film really be so bad that it killed an entire franchise BEFORE there was even a franchise?
In short it wasn’t bad enough to kill a franchise, but it’s certainly dull enough to put it to sleep.
To start with arguably the film’s biggest problem, the story has a severe pacing issue that leaves an odd taste in the mouth. The first act is fine, we’re introduced to Egyptian Princess Ahmanet and her failed quest for power that has her mummified alive and turned into some creepy immortal killer (off-topic, why do these punishments always make the bad guy stronger?). In present day Iraq her tomb is accidentally uncovered by Nick Morton and Chris Vail, two soldiers with a side-job of looting, who – along with Jenny Halsey, the archaeologist who Nick stole a map from – take Ahmanet’s sarcophagus back for studying only for their plane to crash in England and Nick seemingly killed.
As it turns out, Nick has been chosen by Ahmanet to be the vessel for Set, the Egyptian God of Death (actually Anubis but don’t worry about it) and as such has been granted some form of immortality to allow him to survive long enough for her to perform the ritual. Looking for answers, Nick is taken to Jenny’s boss, Dr Henry Jekyl, who can help him, but not in the way Nick expects.
It’s during this sequence that the film starts suffering, the Dr Jekyl sequence doesn’t even take that long but the film just grinds to a halt while it’s trying to explain its central plot premise while also setting up the whole Dark Universe franchise and it takes so long doing both that by the time the third act finally kicks in it just sort of happens. Maybe it was just me but the last half hour of this just felt like one thing happening after another with very little in the way of a connecting element before ending on a rather confusing note about what the hell just happened to Nick. It’s a shame cause I was into the film for that first half hour but everything from the plane crash onwards just failed to hit any good notes.
Character work was.... pretty poor, I didn’t hate anyone but I didn’t particularly like anyone either. As I said at the start I do like Tom Cruise but this is a very easy role for him to the point where he’s probably miscast, during the first half hour Nick is pure Cruise and I dug it, he’s adventurous, he’s cocky, he’s rebellious, he’s a bit of a dick but not to the point where you hate him. The problem is he doesn’t move past that even after being brought back to life and being told he’s been cursed by an Egyptian God of Death (still not Anubis but don’t worry about it). In action hero terms, Nick is fairly bog-standard which is fine on its own but given that Nick is suppose to have the voice of a 5000 year old killer princess in his head, Cruise doesn’t have it in him to convey that, he just ends up looking confused and maybe thinking if he’s wet himself or not.
His supporting cast are just as mixed, Annabelle Wallis has her moments as Jenny and like Nick she’s good in the first half hour when she bypasses the ‘will they, won’t they’ forced chemistry by admitted she had a one night stand with Nick three days ago where he stole her map. But also like Nick she’s fairly bog-standard, maybe a little more hands-on than typical action love interests but movies have been moving passed the damsel-in-distress cliché for decades now so they don’t get credit for it anymore. Jake Johnson feels like he auditioned for the American Werewolf In London remake with his Chris Vail getting killed off pretty early only to come back as a humorous zombie type who may or may not be in Nick’s head. Werewolf similarities aside, Vail is not a good fit for this film and he’s subject to one of my main criticisms that I’ll get into in a second, it’s not Johnson’s fault but his entire character just doesn’t fit with what this film is trying to do, of course I say that believing the film actually knew what it was trying to do.
Russel Crowe is a surprisingly decent fit for Dr Jekyl, although I’m still not 100% on his cockney Eddie Hyde voice. He’s obviously introduced as the Nick Fury of the Dark Universe and was probably designed to have more work in the future but he’s probably the best thing about this film – which isn’t saying a great deal. 2nd Place would have to go to Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet, not a particularly difficult performance but she has the presence to portray evil well and carried a chill factor to her, I at least bought into the fact that she was a force of torment serving the God of Death (still not Anubis but still don’t worry about it). For the type of movie this was I was fine with what Ahmenet had to offer, it’s the rest of the film that suffers.
I’ve not seen Alex Kurtzman’s other works (which appears to be mostly scripts and one family drama that got mixed reviews) but he doesn’t seem the best fit for this type of movie, although considering this was supposed to be a franchise film he may not have had as much control as I thought. In truth though this film’s biggest problem is how inconsistent its tone is, if it was going for the light-hearted, Action Adventure route then it’s way too dark, way too serious and doesn’t have enough set-piece moments to be exciting while if it was going for the Action Horror route then it’s not scary enough and has a lot of ill-placed humour that kills the tension. It’s why I don’t like Vail’s character, by the time the film has two pilots getting speared to deaths by crows we’ve abandoned any sense of fun but keeping a wise-cracking zombie smacks of the film trying to cover all bases, copying both the horror of the original Mummy movies and the campy fun of the Brendan Fraser remakes, and doing a weak job on all of them.
Even the action sequences that seem to be the film’s mainstay aren’t very good, the opening village fight with Nick and Vail vs Iraqi insurgents is decent enough to provide some light-hearted attempted murder to open us up with and on a technical level the plane crash is impressive to watch, but from there nothing stick. We get one chase sequences in an ambulance which isn’t as thrilling as the film wanted it to be, a fight between Nick and Mr Hyde feels absolutely forced in there just to allow the character to be onscreen and the whole third act is backwards, it starts massive with a Sandstorm of glass chasing Nick and Jenny through London which then goes to escaping zombies in the flooded underground tunnels and ends small with a fist-fight between Nick and Ahmanet, surely it should’ve been going the other way, getting bigger and more intense with every new set-piece.
With my curiosity sated I’m happy to never see The Mummy again, at least any that don’t star Rachel Weisz. I maintain that it’s not a bad movie per se, there are elements that work, it’s just quite dull and schizophrenic, I want to believe that Universal could’ve looked at this, realised where their mistakes were, and learnt from them going forward, but considering they’re already talking about abandoning the whole thing they seem to be cutting and running. Part of me feels I should drop the rating a point but I don’t think it deserves to be that low, I’ll never look back on this movie absolutely hating it, that would imply actually remembering anything.
5/10