Logan Sork Film Reviews
The Mummy
With the success of the “cinematic universe” at many other studios, Universal wanted a piece of the action. One franchise that they were hoping to revitalize was the universal monster series, which failed to return after several botched attempts in the previous years. Because of the success of the previous Mummy films, the 2017 reboot was to launch a new cinematic universe known as “Dark Universe”. This sounded promising, as the universal monsters are some of the most iconic characters in film history and could be properly modernized. This interesting premise combined with the celebrity backing of Tom Cruise, who mostly does good work, and the good trailers and behind the scenes exclusive made it seem like the film would be fun and pave the way for exciting new things to come. Unfortunately, it fell flat on its face.
The Mummy is “directed” by Alex Kurtzman and stars Tom Cruise as Nick Morton, a soldier of fortune who uncovers the tomb of the mummy. With the help of archeologist Jennifer Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) we learn that the mummy is princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella, who killed her entire family and gave her soul to the god of death because she was denied her claim to the throne. Through an ancient curse, Ahmanet is re-awakened and Nick is connected to her, as she seeks to bring the god of death to this world through nick’s body. Nick must work with Dr. Halsey to stop Ahmanet before she brings the god of death to our world, all while a mysterious organization led by Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe) has its own agenda.
With such an interesting premise and world, why does this film fail? Well, it doesn’t feel very well constructed. There is simply no cohesive way that all of these elements fit to together. The best way that I would describe this film is a puzzle. All of the pieces are there, and all of the pieces are great by themselves, all that needs to be done is find a way to put the puzzle together in a cohesive and interesting way. Instead of that the filmmakers took the pieces, covered them in glue and stuck them together in random ways. While the puzzle is technically all together, it is not complete or intelligible. The entire movie is like this.
The biggest problem by far is the film’s script. It tries to do to many things at once and comes across of having an identity crisis. It tries to be a horror movie, a comedy, and an action film without succeeding in any of those categories. Whenever it seems like we’re getting somewhere in terms of tonal balance, it switches gears on us and never really decides what it is even by the end of the film. It’s also unnecessarily complicated. The original films were straightforward and simple, allowing for a faster pace. This one is constantly bogged down by exposition and really takes the fun out of the action, as we are constantly taken out of the film for characters to explain things to us.
The editing is also atrocious, which can also be connected to the script. It’s fairly average in its execution, but you can’t help but feel parts are missing or were cut down. Every time something interesting seems like it’s going to happen it stops. This is notable early on in the film, in a scene in which a bunch of spiders swarm the tomb. It builds it up to be exciting, but then all of a sudden, the spiders go away. There are many scenes like this like this throughout the film, resulting in scenes that feel both important and unimportant at the same time.
It isn’t particularly acted or directed well either. This is something that the previous remake excelled in, with the fun performances and fantastic direction really helping to nail its tone of a fun action adventure film. This one is scatterbrained, as is the direction, which feels almost lifeless as there is no attempt to give us a unique spin on anything. The acting and main characters are simply not interesting in the slightest. All off the performances are fine, cruise in particular feels miscast as he struggles to come off as charming and charismatic but instead comes off as… well, Tom Cruise. The characters are also thinly written and bland. The previous film took time to develop the characters, this one moves at such a quick pace that there is barely anytime to remember their names. One character was the comic relief character and he was by far one of the most grating and irritating characters I’ve ever seen in film.
So, are there any redeeming qualities in this film? Surprisingly yes. The mythology is unique and interesting, adding a different spin on the cinematic universe that we haven’t seen. Sofia Boutella excels as the titular Mummy, bringing a unique physicality and look to the role that helps her stand out amongst previous incarnations. Russell Crowe is also a lot of fun as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and brings some much-needed charm and charisma to the film. Brian Tyler’s score is also excellent as is the cinematography and set design. The action sequences are fun to watch, and ill admit there were a few times where I thought to myself “this is kind of good”… only for something not good to come right after that.
What makes this film so frustrating is that this could’ve been good. Had the filmmakers taken the time to iron out the kinks and focus on making a good movie rather than a cinematic universe, we might have an interesting take on the story. It’s a shame to see all of these great pieces get wasted in jumbled, scatterbrained mess of a film. Maybe they might get a second chance, but for now this version of The Mummy deserves to be cursed and buried forever.
3.5/10