I really wish there were more horror movies about Mummies. Unfortunately 2017's The Mummy can't really decide whether it wants to be a light hearted romp like the Brendan Fraser 1999 film, or a straight up horror like the original from 1932. The film awkwardly bounces between tones, undercutting tensionless horror with unfunny gags. It takes liberally from An American Werewolf in London, right down to the hero being haunted by his dead best friend, but The Mummy lacks any of that film's inventiveness or acumen.
We follow Nick, a wacky thief, soldier, and complete dickhead. He's joined by an offensively boring Egyptologist who compulsively speaks in dramatic pauses: "This chains aren't here to lift something... IT'S TO HOLD IT DOWN!...This isn't a tomb... ITS A PRISON!" They go to war torn Iraq and stumble across the sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian princess. This sort of thing is easier to swallow in a 1930s pulp setting, where grave robbing from foreign countries was an accepted pastime, but telling the same sort of story in the modern day begs for some kind of re-evaluation of that whole colonialism thing. Like maybe Iraq would have something to say about armed Westerners stealing its priceless artefacts? Maybe it even has its own archaeologists? The heroes don't dwell on it, they just fly the 5000 year old coffin out of the country from the bottom of a helicopter, dangling in the open air like a car freshener.
Our mummy is played by Sofia Boutella. At first I thought the casting was inspired; a nice subversion of the format, but the movie quickly falls for classic monster girl tropes. Why of course the girl mummy has to be sexy, and of course she has to kill people by kissing them. And why shouldn't she be motivated by an overwhelming desire to fuck Nick? I laughed out loud when she starts calling Nick "setepa-i", in the style of an anime waifu saying "sempai!" Boutella is utterly misused.
The same can be said for the special effects, which are somehow even more obvious looking than the movie from 20 years prior. We have one scene where Mr Hyde shows up (yes, he's in it too, for sequel reasons), and rather than simply apply makeup to Russell Crowe (horribly miscast, by the way), they CGI some contact lenses and veins onto him whilst he capers around talking like a cockney geezer; even if the CGI had been decent, the end result would still look moronic.
And that's the best way to describe The Mummy. Moronic. If you are a fan of watching bad movies to riff on, than The Mummy should be high on your list, but that's the only kind of recommendation it will ever deserve.
Utterly Unfunny, Accidentally Hilarious
I really wish there were more horror movies about Mummies. Unfortunately 2017's The Mummy can't really decide whether it wants to be a light hearted romp like the Brendan Fraser 1999 film, or a straight up horror like the original from 1932. The film awkwardly bounces between tones, undercutting tensionless horror with unfunny gags. It takes liberally from An American Werewolf in London, right down to the hero being haunted by his dead best friend, but The Mummy lacks any of that film's inventiveness or acumen.
We follow Nick, a wacky thief, soldier, and complete dickhead. He's joined by an offensively boring Egyptologist who compulsively speaks in dramatic pauses: "This chains aren't here to lift something... IT'S TO HOLD IT DOWN!...This isn't a tomb... ITS A PRISON!" They go to war torn Iraq and stumble across the sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian princess. This sort of thing is easier to swallow in a 1930s pulp setting, where grave robbing from foreign countries was an accepted pastime, but telling the same sort of story in the modern day begs for some kind of re-evaluation of that whole colonialism thing. Like maybe Iraq would have something to say about armed Westerners stealing its priceless artefacts? Maybe it even has its own archaeologists? The heroes don't dwell on it, they just fly the 5000 year old coffin out of the country from the bottom of a helicopter, dangling in the open air like a car freshener.
Our mummy is played by Sofia Boutella. At first I thought the casting was inspired; a nice subversion of the format, but the movie quickly falls for classic monster girl tropes. Why of course the girl mummy has to be sexy, and of course she has to kill people by kissing them. And why shouldn't she be motivated by an overwhelming desire to fuck Nick? I laughed out loud when she starts calling Nick "setepa-i", in the style of an anime waifu saying "sempai!" Boutella is utterly misused.
The same can be said for the special effects, which are somehow even more obvious looking than the movie from 20 years prior. We have one scene where Mr Hyde shows up (yes, he's in it too, for sequel reasons), and rather than simply apply makeup to Russell Crowe (horribly miscast, by the way), they CGI some contact lenses and veins onto him whilst he capers around talking like a cockney geezer; even if the CGI had been decent, the end result would still look moronic.
And that's the best way to describe The Mummy. Moronic. If you are a fan of watching bad movies to riff on, than The Mummy should be high on your list, but that's the only kind of recommendation it will ever deserve.