ShOR 365: The Mummy (2017)

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

Oh, Tom Cruise. I will admit that Cruise is a good actor. Surprisingly, the Mission Impossible franchise continues to get better with each installment. That almost never happens. But, I will preface this review by saying despite how good of an actor he is, he’s only as good as the script. Truthfully, I feel that he really was miscast here. Like I said, I’m not saying this because he’s a bad actor–because he isn’t–but I feel like he really didn’t belong in this film. Neither did Annabelle Wallis.

The remake is a similar concept of the 1997 version of The Mummy.

Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) is set to inherit the Upper Kingdom of Egypt from her pharaoh father. Once she’s pharaoh, Ahmanet will be worshiped as a living god. The Pharaoh’s wife gives birth to a baby boy who will inherit the kingdom instead. Furious, Ahmanet makes a pact with the Egyptian God of Death, Set. After she kills her father, mother, and baby brother, she takes a lover to bring Set to the human realm so they can rule together. Of course, the ritual is disrupted and Ahmanet is removed from the history books and mummified alive. Fast forward to modern times, Nick Morton (Cruise) and Sgt. Vail (Jake Johnson) are grave robbers and military men. They stumble upon Haram, an Egyptian burial site in the Persian Gulf. They bring the wrath of Ahmanet into the world, Vail dies, and Morton’s partner, Jenny (Annabelle Wallis), works for Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe) who wants to kill Morton for awakening Ahmanet’s curse.

Whew. There really is a lot of stuff to unpack in this film. I feel like there were three different storylines that  I had to try to sit and watch. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like the film. I’m just… not entirely sure what I felt about the film.

Ahmanet’s story is pretty basic and almost follows Anck-Su-Namun’s story in the 1997 version. For some reason, the inclusion of Set (an actual Egyptian God) made me super happy. I love Egyptian mythology. Outside Anubis and passing mentions of Horus, there wasn’t that aspect in the 1997 film. So, that inclusion was pretty awesome, not going to lie. Another aspect of the film that was really nice were the special effects, especially surrounding Ahmanet as a mummy. The makeup was great. Worlds better and worlds creepier than the previous Mummy. I mean, Imhotep was pretty creepy. I actually had to shut off this film because I couldn’t handle it in the dark, by myself. I’ve only done that with one other film. Something about zombie mummies just freaked me out.

Other than that, the movie was meh. The idea of The Mummy was to bring about the Dark Universe and to bring horror back to Universal. And when I say ‘horror’ I mean old school horror that Universal began with. It worked on a few levels but for the most part, the film tried to be too much like the 1997 film. Cruise is no Brendan Fraser and Nick Morton is no Rick O’Connell. Sadly. I really would have liked the film more had it decided to be darker and less funny. Crowe as Jekyll and Hyde really surprised me. It was an unneeded plot thread but damn, I wish The Mummy would’ve succeeded so that I could’ve gotten a stand-alone film with him in it. Crowe killed it as both characters.

Another thing that really surprised me was the ending. Spoilers ahead so if you don’t want to know the end, don’t read.

It was a little strange watching a man sacrifice himself to bring the woman he loves back to life but that is exactly what happens to Morton. Over the course of the film, Morton and Jenny get closer to each other and Jenny sees that though Morton is a bit of an ass, he still has the capacity of being a good man. We see that in the end when he stabs himself in the chest and allows himself to become Set’s human vessel and body in this world. One, I wasn’t expecting that. Two, I need more of that in films. I feel like it’s a good role reversal. Three, it was the perfect set up for a franchise. Here’s a human man who has an Egyptian god in his body, the god of Death, at that, who could either be evil or good. I felt it was an intriguing ending and it’s sad that we’ll never get the pay off of that sacrifice.

So, I guess, you could say that I didn’t like this film but I didn’t hate it. It’s not like The Princess Bridewhere I won’t ever watch it again. It also isn’t something that I’ll automatically gravitate toward if I don’t have something to watch. It’s one of those strange films where I liked it but, at the same time, was disappointed by it. I can’t explain how that works. I’m not even going to attempt to explain it. The Mummy is just one of those films that you have to watch for yourself to make your own opinions about it, honestly.