Review of The Mummy (2017) by Retroblur — 09 Jun 2017

Unfocused, underdeveloped, and uninspired are the three U's that ruin Universal's fourth (Yes, I said FOURTH) attempt at building a shared universe for their library of monsters. I thought that this would be terrible from the trailers, but I had a soft spot of hope, simply so that Universal could take advantage of the Dark Universe's potential. I was dead wrong.

The Mummy seems more interested at brushing away any sort of character or build-up for action and foreshadowing (of the DU, of course), than telling a good story. The first 20 minutes aren't great, but they do establish the plot, characters, and initial tone (a bit more serious than before, but not afraid of having fun). Then it all goes down as the film moves along. The tone becomes inconsistent, shifting from scary and serious to silly and comedic at inappropriate moments; the moments themselves are cheap, with jump-scare style horror, and lame slapstick. The pacing dashes by way too fast, not giving enough time for anything in the film to settle. The characters, particularly Tom Cruise's, have no arc or development, not even any chemistry between him and Annabelle Wallis to liven the film up. Ahmanet is just as dull as anyone else, having very little charm or depth for us to be frightened or to care of her. A good portion of the film is dedicated to Dr. Jekyll and his research facility, Prodigium, yet the film breezes through those (actually interesting) ideas so fast that here's little reason to have them in the film.

The whole feature is a mess, deciding that being a $125 million promotional piece for the Dark Universe was more important than being a good movie. What an absolute waste of potential.