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The Mummy

URSED tombs, mummified monarchs and horror cinema have long gone hand in bandaged hand — and for good reason. The genre plays into our fascination with long-lost civilizations, but also offers all the gory nittygritty of imperfect resurrected corpses. While the concept might seem dated, postcolonial anxieties and ongoing debates about the rightful home of the world’s treasures could arguably provide rich grounds for an inventive, gloriously tongue-in-cheek modern Mummy movie.

Naturally enough, Alex Kurtzman’s new film The Mummy, an attempt to kick off a rebooted “Dark Universe” franchise, is nothing of the sort.

It’s not really a horror film at all; it’s a supernatural action blockbuster. Spine-tingling chills are in short supply but there are plenty of crashes, explosions and CGI spiders.

There is also plenty of Tom Cruise. The disconcertingly youthful 54-year-old (could he be a mummy himself?) plays grave robber Nick Morton, probably described somewhere in the script as a “lovable rogue”, who clashes with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis, 22 years Cruise’s junior) after stealing a map to an ancient tomb in Northern Iraq.

Following some run-ins with insurgents and a few US air strikes — all portrayed as good light-hearted fun — and some cringeworthy sparring between former lovers Morton and Halsey, we eventually uncover the grave itself.

It’s a very unusual grave, we are told, with an air of menacing mystery, because it’s Egyptian — but located miles away from Egypt. It’s got a perfectly preserved “canal system” and a deep pool of glistening, liquid mercury. It’s been designed, Halsey tells us, slowly, not to aid a journey to the afterlife, but to keep something trapped inside.

In fact, it isn’t a tomb at all. It’s . . . a prison. Cruise’s reaction to this information is to cavalierly fire off a shot, unleashing an ancient pulley system and causing a grim-faced sarcophagus to rise from the pool. Bingo. Inside the sarcophagus (but not for long, haha!) is the evil ancient Egyptian Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who is easily the most likable character in the film. (Asked why she murdered her father, stepmother and new baby brother, she sweetly explains: “They were different times.”) Ahmanet is on a mission to reincarnate the all-powerful Egyptian god Set in a virile, living human body but chooses Cruise instead.

In all fairness to the filmmakers, while nothing that follows feels remotely original, no one watching could complain of being short-changed on the “packing stuff in” front. There are flocks of possessed birds. There’s an England where everyone says “sodding” and “wanker”, and Kaiser Chiefs’ I Predict a Riot is playing full blast in the pubs. There’s an army of Crusader knights, uncovered during excavations for a new London Underground tunnel.

There’s Russell Crowe as Dr Jekyll, and Russell Crowe doing a sort of demented Victorian Cockney impression as Mr Hyde. There’s a subplot involving Morton’s murdered army friend, who sporadically appears, in a decayed state, to warn his buddy that he is cursed. And there are some oddly sadistic scenes in which Ahmanet is chained up, but manages to escape with the help of some more magical creepy crawlies. It’s all patently ridiculous — and surprisingly watchable.

Perhaps the real problem, ultimately, is the characters themselves. The reason the Marvel shared universe — which took years to build up — works, is because all of its superheroes feel engagingly human: fully-formed characters we actually want to spend time with. Here, the writing is onenote, and the leads little more than placeholders.

Universal’s monster franchise has made it out of the tomb, just about — but if this rebirth is going to sustain itself long term, it’s going to need a little more meat under its bandages. — © The Daily Telegraph, London

‘The Mummy’ is in cinemas