FILM OF THE WEEK
The Mummy
Cert: 15A; Now showing The monster films Universal Studios trotted out between the 1920s and 1950s delighted in all things hunch-backed, howling and designed to make a maiden shriek with watery-eyed terror. Universal has decided the time is right to reconjure those Gothic ghouls for the digital age and plans to unspool a stream of titles over the coming years that will feature Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s Monster, all under the banner “Dark Universe”.
Writer and producer Alex Kurtzman will be central to the Dark Universe brand and here takes the director’s chair for its first hurrah. Grimmer than the swashbuckling 1999 reboot but cheesier than a straight-up horror, it comes ready-packaged with a gleaming Tom Cruise grin and a hefty budget.
Cruise is relic hunter Nick Morton. While evading insurgent fire during an escapade in the war-torn Middle East, a drone strike reveals to Nick an ancient Egyptian underground tomb seemingly miles from Egypt itself. Something was buried here, we learn in the prologue, that was never meant to be unearthed.
This doesn’t dawn on Annabelle Wallis’s archaeologist, who with the reluctant help of Nick and the US military, loads the eerie sarcophagus on to a plane bound for London. They’re barely airborne when all hell breaks loose as an old evil is woken up from its long slumber.
There’s just about enough here that sticks, namely nifty action sequences and production values, Sofia Boutella’s physicality as the bandaged demon and a camp Russell Crowe as the head of a mysterious laboratory. Less assured is Jake Johnson’s awkwardly pitched comic-relief zombie or that cluttered, over-cooked finale.