Film Review: The Mummy

The Mummy stars Tom Cruise as Nick, a U. S. Military officer who unearths the tomb of Princess Ahmanet, and in doing so unleashes her spirit and curses himself in the process. The one noticeable difference from this instalment from its predecessors is that the mummy is a female, which, admittedly, was an interesting take on the series. However, that is about the only compliment to this film.

While the plot follows a structure to save Nick’s life, it’s at best okay. Nothing too dramatic or surprising changes the course, and the surprises that followed were pretty unfulfilling; especially one character’s reveal, which came across as pointless and confusing more than the shock factor I’m assuming they were hoping for. The mummies looked more like zombies in this film, which was disappointing, but not as disappointing as Wallis’ character: Jennifer. This film suffered somewhat from being released around the same time as Wonder Woman, which featured as strong female in the lead role; Jennifer was the stereotypical damsel in distress who constantly got in predicaments with Nick having to save her. It was disappointing seeing this, especially with the twist of a female mummy, but I guess Tom Cruise needs to be the hero.

Outside of the plot it doesn’t get much better for the film: the writing was pretty poor to the point where they needed large spells of narration to allow us to know what’s going on. They start off with narration and it comes across as both lazy and unoriginal; they cannot tell the story through the actions instead needing to feed us what’s happening. This on top of the clichéd tactic of actions immediately contradicting a character’s speech for comedic effect (in this film Chris gets the line of ‘we’re alive’ after the military saved them only for the building they’re on to immediately collapse). These are done for comedic effect but having two instances in one film makes it seem like there wasn’t much thought into dialogue. And the acting isn’t much better; while Tom Cruise sells most of the injuries he receives, it never comes across in the film that any character is truly terrified of this unbeatable evil coming back to life and roaming the streets.

The editing gets the highest praise from this film as the special effects aren’t terrible; Princess Ahmanet looks pretty decent as we watch her form and evolve over the course of the film and the zombie-mummies, while silly, also look okay.

Overall it’s probably a film only worth watching if you’ve exhausted all other options; and while it won’t bore you so much, it won’t excite or engage you within its world.

2017 in Cinema

The Mummy, 2017

Directed by: Alex Kurtzman

Starring: Tom Cruise, Russel Crowe, Annabelle Wallis

Plot: * *

Acting: * *

Writing: *

Editing: * * *

Overall Rating: * *

Ratings Elsewhere:

Metacritic: 34

Rotten Tomatoes: 15%

IMDB: 5.8/10