Yummy Mummy
Cruise’s supernatural action blockbuster is short on horror
The Mummy 15 cert, 107 min
Dir Alex Kurtzman
Starring Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson
Cursed 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 civilisations, but also offers all the gory thrill of imperfect resurrected corpses. Plus, 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.
Unsurprisingly, Alex Kurtzman’s new film The Mummy – an attempt to kick off a Marvel-inspired “Dark Universe” franchise starring the classic Universal monsters, from the Bride of Frankenstein to the Invisible Man – is nothing of the sort. In fact, it’s not really a horror film at all, but 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-yearold (could he be a mummy himself?) plays graverobber Nick Morton, probably described somewhere in the story treatment as a “lovable rogue”, who clashes with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis, 22 years his junior) after stealing the map to an ancient tomb in northern Iraq.
Following some run-ins with insurgents and a few US airstrikes – all portrayed as good, light-hearted fun – and some cringe-worthy sparring between the two adventurers, who have previously shared a sexual encounter (their dialogue is even less funny than all the missiles), we eventually get to the burial site 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 cavalier reaction to this information is to 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, ha ha!) is the evil ancient Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who is easily the most likable character in the entire film. (Asked, at one point, 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 and chooses Cruise, on the grounds that he was the one to wake her up.
In all fairness to the filmmakers, while nothing that follows feels remotely original, no one watching could complain of being shortchanged on the “packing stuff in” front. There are flocks of possessed birds. There’s an England (where the American leads end up) where everyone talks Mockney and the 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 Tube tunnel. There’s Russell Crowe, as Dr Jekyll, and also 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 – this feels less like an American Werewolf in London reference, and more like a bad pastiche. There are some oddly sadistic scenes in which Ahamnet 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, though, is the characters themselves. The reason the Marvel universe works is because all of its superheroes feel engagingly human: fully formed characters that we actually want to spend time with. Here, the writing is one-note, 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 longterm, it’s going to need more meat under its bandages.