As
the latest Universal monster reboot commences, the audience sees the logo for
the “Dark Universe” shared world, followed by the ident for the Perfect World
Pictures production company. Fittingly contradictory, it gives us an immediate
clue this movie has no idea what it is supposed be. This certainly isn’t a
horror film, nor can you really call it a monster movie. It is more of an
action flick or a CGI show reel. There isn’t even a proper mummy in Alex
Kurtzman’s The Mummy (trailer here), which opens
today nationwide.
Princess
Ahmanet was darn near the feminist icon of antiquity, but her lecherous old man
had a son with his new trophy wife, thereby removing her from the line of
succession. Not one to take sleights lying down, Ahmanet made a pact with the
god of the underworld, but she was killed by the palace guards before she could
complete her infernal sacrifice. Fearing her bad mojo, Ahmanet was buried in an
unmarked tomb way the heck and gone in Mesopotamia. Fatefully, our “hero,” Nick
Morton, a relic-smuggling GI rather loosely attached to an infantry unit,
stumbles across it. (Frankly, it is rather dubious a fifty-four-year-old
enlisted man would have such leeway to craft his own recon missions, but that
is the least of the problems here.)
Busted
by Jenny Halsey, the pretty archaeologist he seduced for her secret tomb map, Morton
and his sidekick Chris Vail are forced to help her schlep the sarcophagus to
London. While en route, the reawakened Ahmanet attacks their flight with hordes
of crows. Morton saves Halsey, but both he and Vail are goners. However,
Ahmanet has apparently decided Morton is the one to complete her blood
sacrifice, so she will not only him to die until she can kill him herself.
Likewise, Vail starts to haunt Morton like Griffin Dunne in American Werewolf in London.
Obviously,
none of the six credited screenwriters had any clue why the original Universal
monster movies or the next generation Hammer films were popular. Instead, they
slavishly try to follow the Marvel Avengers shared world template, appointing
Dr. Henry Jekyll the Nick Fury-like leader of the Prodigum, essentially a
S.H.I.E.L.D. for monster hunters. In this case, the lack of originality is
almost insulting.
Even
though they are dated in terms of effects, the original Universal franchises
still work because of their gothic intimacy. Frankenstein was the ultimate
father-son rivalry. The Wolf-Man was the prodigal son wracked with guilt. The
Invisible Man was out to settle scores with everyone who did him dirty. Dracula
made women swoon. In contrast, Kurtzman and company just serve up bombast.
There isn’t even any moonlight or shadows. Nearly every scene takes during
daylight hours.
If
that were not sufficiently problematic, The
Mummy could very well mark the point when Cruise’s cocky kid shtick completely
ran dry. Spending time with the utterly charmless Morton is like listening to
fingernails on a blackboard, while undergoing root canal treatment. Russell
Crowe labors to make Jekyll flamboyantly fun, but he is struggling in a losing
cause. Arguably, Annabelle Wallis fares the best as the smart and forceful
Halsey, but it is impossible to believe she would put up with the obnoxious
Morton. As a further bafflement, The
Mummy apparently completely wastes two reliable genre role-players: Neil
Maskell and Chasty Ballesteros, both of whom are listed in imdb, but we
completely missed them on-screen.
