Review of The Mummy (2017) by Lizzie M — 11 Jul 2017

As a stand-alone movie, The Mummy lacks coherence, emotion, and thrills that the trailer promised. The movie can't seem to decide what it wants to be: horror, thriller, sci-fi fantasy, etc. It throws you this way and that: first shoving cheap jump scares and creepy renderings of the monsters in your face. Then, it changes directions, introducing new character after character after character, never fully explaining the context surrounding their introduction. It seems as though there were a lot of good concepts put into this movie, but it simply wasn't coherent enough to string them all together. Whether intentional or not, it bears zero resemblance to the original Mummy movie with Brendan Frasier, save for one reference I caught that flashed onscreen for about a half a second. Although the movie seems to be purposefully distancing itself from the original, it would have been nice to see at least a few more nostalgic nods to it (it is a reboot, after all). But one of the most disappointing elements of the movie was the lack of personality. The movie attempts at presenting the audience with fun, spunky characters, with lots of guts and electricity between each other. But this falls flat, instead leaving the viewer hungry for more character development. Tom Cruise's character Nick is boring and predictable, and his relationship with Jenny is forced and doesn't really make sense.

However, although the movie didn't really impress me, I will admit that it at least entertained me for its duration. And to it's credit, it provided some promising world-building elements for the movies to come. I don't have high hopes for the rest of the Dark Universe series, but part of me does wish they can fix this mess and turn it into something worth watching.