mummy movie review

Film Review: Tom Cruise in ‘The Mummy’

Tom Cruise fights an Egyptian demon, which takes up residence inside him, in a monster reboot that's too busy to be much fun.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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No one over the age of 10 ever confused them with good movies, but the “Mummy” franchise that kicked off in 1999 had a joyously sinister and farfetched eye-candy pizzazz. Basically, these were movies that pelted you with CGI — scuttling scarabs, swarms of skeletons in moldy rags — and mixed the cheesy/awesome visual onslaught with a handful of actors (Brendan Fraser, Dwayne Johnson) who seemed just as lightweight at the FX. So “ The Mummy ,” starring Tom Cruise , raises a key aesthetic question: How, exactly, do you reboot empty-calorie creature-feature superficiality?

The new “Mummy,” you may be surprised to hear, doesn’t have a whole lot of show-stopping visual flimflam up its sleeve. Instead, it’s built around a chancy big trick. I’ll herald this with a major spoiler alert (if you don’t want to know what happens in “The Mummy,” please stop reading), though it’s really the essential premise of the movie. Cruise, who is cast as Nick Morton, a freelance raider of artifacts he sells on the black market, isn’t just fighting evil — his character gets inhabited by evil. He is taken over by the spirit of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), an ancient Egyptian princess who murdered her father, the Pharaoh, and his infant son, all so that she could lay claim to the throne. For her crime, she was mummified and buried alive. (Yes, she’s pissed off.)

The way her spirit merges with Nick’s remains a little vague, since it’s not as if Cruise turns into a frothing bad guy. He deals with the fact that he’s got evil inside him by treating it in a highly practical and energized fashion — as a problem to be solved. He’s Tom Cruise, dammit, and he’s not just going to stand by! He’s going to attack the issue. He’s going to fight it, debate it, stare it down, put it in its place, kick its ass, out-think it and out-run it, out-punch it and out-underwater-swim it.

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All of which turns out to be a lot less fun than the stupid zappy “Mummy” movies of the ’00s. It’s not as if this one is all that smart, what with a plot that somehow squashes together the First Dynasty of Egypt, the Crusades, and the looting of Iraqi antiquities. Yet it does seem to be trying for something, and so, if you’re a Cruise fan (as I very much am), you roll with it. The flashes of Egyptian backstory are photographed (by Ben Seresin) with a yummy desert glow, and the Algerian actress Sofia Boutella, in black bangs and vertical rows of tattooed facial hieroglyphs, makes Ahmanet exotic in all the right ways, like something out of a Rihanna video. Then she shows up in contemporary London, along with Nick and Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), the comely archeologist who Nick slept with and whose life he saved. Ahmanet is now a mottled, gray-skinned mummy who gains energy by putting civilians in a lip-lock and literally sucking the life out of them, which reduces them to skeletal zombies who exist to do her bidding.

It’s here that you begin to divine the film’s basic strategy: It will grab ideas, motifs, and effects from almost any genre and jam them together, palming off its grab-bag quality as “originality.” Scene for scene, “The Mummy” has been competently staged by director Alex Kurtzman, who has one previous feature to his credit (the minor 2012 Chris Pine heart-tugger “People Like Us”) and has never made a special-effects film before. He knows how to visualize a spectacular plane crash, or how to play up the Dagger of Set — a mystical weapon of death that needs a giant ruby to complete it — so that it doesn’t seem as chintzy as something out of a “National Treasure” movie (which is basically what it is). Yet competence isn’t the same thing as style or vision. “The Mummy” is a literal-minded, bumptious monster mash of a movie. It keeps throwing things at you, and the more you learn about the ersatz intricacy of its “universe,” the less compelling it becomes.

Russell Crowe , cultivating an air of pompous malevolence, shows up in the opening scene, but it isn’t until later that we learn he’s playing Dr. Henry Jekyll — yes, that Henry Jekyll. Jekyll, it turns out, has to keep injecting his damaged hand with a regimen of drugs to avoid turning into Mr. Hyde, but watching all this the audience may be thinking: Whose bright idea was it to mix “The Mummy” with an entirely different formative horror story, as if the two could be cross-bred like some Famous Monsters of Filmland version of the Justice League?

The answer wouldn’t matter if “The Mummy” had the courage of its convictions…or the fun of its nonsense. But it falls right into a nether zone in between. The problem at its heart is that the reality of what the movie is — a Tom Cruise vehicle — is at war with the material. The actor, at 54, is still playing that old Cruise trope, the selfish cocky semi-scoundrel who has to grow up. Will Nick give in to Ahmanet, the malevolent temptress in her Bettie Page Egyptian hair? Or will he stay true to Jenny, the brainy angel of light? The trouble is that Cruise, at least in a high-powered potboiler like this one, is so devoted to maintaining his image as a clear and wholesome hero that his flirtation with the dark side is almost entirely theoretical. As Universal’s new “Dark Universe” (of which “The Mummy” is the first installment) unfolds, I wouldn’t hold my breath over which side is going to win, or how many more films it will take to play that out. It’s not just that there isn’t enough at stake (though there isn’t). It’s that the movie doesn’t seem to know how little at stake there is.

Reviewed at Regal E-Walk, New York, June 6, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 107 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Dark Universe, Perfect World Pictures in association with Secret Hideout, Conspiracy Factory, Sean Daniel Company production. Producers: Alex Kurtzman, Chris Morgan, Sean Daniel, Sarah Bradshaw. Executive producers: Jeb Brody, Robert Orci.
• Crew: Director: Alex Kurtzman. Screenplay: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman. Camera (color, widescreen): Ben Seresin. Editors: Gina Hirsch, Paul Hirsch, Andrew Mondshein.
• With: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari, Simon Atherton, Stephen Thompson.

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Review: ‘The Mummy,’ With Tom Cruise, Deserves a Quick Burial

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By A.O. Scott

• June 7, 2017

You’ve no doubt been told that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all. If I followed that rule, I’d be unemployed. But still. There’s no great joy in accentuating the negative. So I will say this in favor of “The Mummy”: It is 110 minutes long. That is about 20 minutes shorter than “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” about which I had some unkind things to say a couple of weeks ago. Simple math will tell you how much better this movie is than that one. If you have no choice but to see it — a circumstance I have trouble imagining — you can start in on your drinking that much sooner.

“The Mummy” begins with a supposed Egyptian proverb to the effect that “we” never really die; “we” assume new forms and keep right on living. I’m not an Egyptologist, but it seems just as likely that those words were lifted from a movie-studio strategy memo. Universal, lacking a mighty superhero franchise, has gone into its intellectual-property files, which are full of venerable monsters, and created a commercial agglomeration it calls the Dark Universe . “The Mummy” is the first of a slew — a swarm? a pestilence? — of features reviving those old creatures, including the one from the Black Lagoon. We can also look forward to new visits from Frankenstein’s monster and his bride, the Wolf Man and the Invisible Man, among others.

It sounds like fun. The “Mummy” reboot from 1999 , directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser, was kind of fun. Monster movies frequently are. This one, directed by Alex Kurtzman and starring Tom Cruise, is an unholy mess. Mr. Cruise plays Nick Morton, a jaunty military daredevil with a sideline in antiquities theft and a nutty sidekick (Jake Johnson). When a caper goes wrong, the two call in an airstrike on an Iraqi village — I guess that’s something people are doing for kicks nowadays — and a mysterious tomb is unearthed. Luckily, an archaeologist, Dr. Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), is on hand to explain what it’s all about and also to affirm Nick’s heterosexuality.

Long story short: An ancient evil has been unleashed upon the world. Its agent is a long-buried pharaoh’s daughter, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who is covered with mysterious tattoos and convinced that Nick is her secret lover, or the god of death, or both. She gets inside his head, which is awkward both because he’s kind of sweet on Jenny and because it’s such an empty place. Ahmanet also has a retinue of zombielike minions at her disposal, who rampage through England on their way to a meeting with Russell Crowe.

Mr. Crowe plays another fixture in the Dark Universe, a label that strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration. Dim Universe would be more accurate, with respect both to the murky, ugly images and to the intellectual capacities of the script, written and conceived by a bunch of people who are capable of better. The old black-and-white Universal horror movies were a mixed bag, but they had some imagination. They could be creepy or campy, weird or lyrical. “The Mummy” gestures — or flails — in a number of directions but settles into the dreary 21st-century action-blockbuster template. There’s chasing and fighting, punctuated by bouts of breathless explaining and a few one-liners that an archaeologist of the future might tentatively decode as jokes.

There is a vague notion that Nick is struggling with dueling impulses toward good and evil, acting out his version of the Jekyll-Hyde predicament. A more interesting movie might have involved a similar struggle within Ahmanet, but a more interesting movie was not on anybody’s mind.

It will be argued that this one was made not for the critics but for the fans. Which is no doubt true. Every con game is played with suckers in mind.

The Mummy Rated PG-13. There’s a naked Egyptian in there somewhere. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.

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The Mummy (2017) review

Tom Cruise stars in The Mummy, the launch of Universal's Dark Universe. Here's our review...

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If your expectations of The Mummy led you to anticipate an action movie, which the initial trailer that has been spamming every Odeon screening I’ve been to this year seemed to suggest, you’ll likely be surprised by it. Rather than a re-tread of the Brendan Fraser-led Stephen Sommers’ remake, a greater emphasis is placed on horror this time around.

There’s a lot to like about the film, which sees Tom Cruise’s Nick Morton tangling with a disgruntled ancient undead villain, Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet, and drawing the attention of Dr Jekyll (Russell Crowe) as he does so. Cruise is on good form, whether conniving, charming or fighting as hard as he possibly can. At times his performance evokes Bruce Campbell, which is something this writer definitely hadn’t anticipated going in.

The action sequences, fewer though they are in number than we might have expected, are a mixed bag. The much-promoted plane sequence in particular lands (sorry). It’s thrilling and inventive. Director Alex Kurtzman lets the action play out, as he does for his entire film, without leaning on quick cuts or erratic camera movements. It looks good, it’s fun, it’s exciting and you can actually tell what’s going on. It’s also subject to a great reference later in the film, a single line that provides perhaps the best moment of the entire movie.

The Mummy looks grandiose and feels large. The set design and the way those sets feature in the cinematography give the film a sense of sizable scale. The use of colour in the desert sequence is really impressive, too. It’s a lovely looking film.

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Among the film’s other visual triumphs are the creatures, which are gruesome and would look more at home on the pages of Fangoria than Empire. Without wishing to betray the surprises of the film, The Mummy features some great creature gags (it’s in these scenes that we enjoyed Cruise’s Bruce Campbell-like fight work). They’re nothing we haven’t seen before, but they work and they’ve never looked so well polished. Kurtzman is great at silly horror fights and and surprises by building a really creepy atmosphere at times, too (although the films attempts at jump scares fail to stir much discomfort). There are a few references to other Dark Universe monsters and they’re quite exciting. The Mummy is at its best when it’s a horror film.

Unfortunately, for all the good in The Mummy , it’s hampered by a lack of balance.

As I’ve mentioned, it’s actually not too action heavy, but the muddled transitions from set pieces to horror stamp the creepy right out of the film. That The Mummy is a comedy and an action film as well as a horror means it has an arsenal of different beats it can use. It doesn’t always choose wisely. So in one scene, an atmosphere is building, then the titular Mummy unexpectedly leaps and lands with a thud, pure action movie stuff. Then Tom Cruise makes a joke. The action leap kicks the atmosphere to the floor and then the lame joke puts it out of its misery for the rest of the scene.

Perhaps the difficulties of a film that fits into so many genres is exacerbated by the number of writers. There are screenwriting credits for David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman, with story by credits for Jon Spaihts, Jenny Lumet and director Alex Kurtzman. That is a lot of voices telling you a story.

There are a lot of exciting incidents, there’s horror and there are jokes. There are big action sequences and there’s terror on the streets of London. There’s work done to set up a shared movie universe. There are nods to old movies. There are a lot of characters (stand out Jake Johnson is woefully underused). With all of this going on, it just doesn’t feel like we get very much story.

While the horror sequences are handled well, there are a decent few poor jokes. And while at its best the film thrills with action sequences, as it does when it introduces Cruise and when Ahmanet hits the streets of London, one fight scene between two characters feels out of place, while the big finale is flat and anticlimactic.

A small detail, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you about some incredible incidental dialogue, shouted in the background in an English accent. “Sod orf!” they yell, presumably before going back to work sweeping yer chimney, guv’na. It’s just a silly moment, harmless enough even if it did lift me right out of the film. Elsewhere, the BBFC’s surprise 15 rating for The Mummy has absolved me of my duty of highlighting that the film is probably too scary for younger veiwers.

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There’s much to enjoy in The Mummy , but there are some odd choices and it never seems to gel together. We’re still keen for the next instalment in the Dark Universe, but with the caveat that we’re really hopeful improvements will be made.

The Mummy is in UK cinemas from June 9th.

Matt Edwards

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‘the mummy’: film review.

Universal tries to get back into the classic-monster biz with the help of Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe in Alex Kurtzman's 'The Mummy.'

By THR Staff

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Some have noted that Universal must hate to be opening Alex Kurtzman’s The Mummy in the second week of Wonder Woman ‘s run, with that hit sure to suck millions out of its box-office haul. But Wonder Woman isn’t all bad for the newly launched “enterprise,” dubbed Dark Universe, with which the studio hopes to exploit characters it introduced way back in the 1920-’50s : After all, it proves that such a series of interrelated movies (like DC’s “extended universe”) can still succeed after the well has been poisoned by outings so terrible any executive with taste would have pulled the plug. Sure, it’s hard to muster anything like desire for another Dark Universe flick after seeing this limp, thrill-free debut. But who knows? Maybe shifting gears to a female protagonist in 2019’s Bride of Frankenstein will do the trick.

Then again, the fact that Uni’s recent D.U. hype mentions only the Bride’s groom, to be played by Javier Bardem , may show it’s more heavily invested in big-name dudes than in making heroes of women. Dudes like Russell Crowe , whose Dr. Jekyll apparently will be the glue holding these pictures together as a series. Or like Tom Cruise , who gave his all to one long-running franchise by reviving Mission: Impossible , and, judging from The Mummy , should perhaps not be asked to do so again.

Release date: Jun 09, 2017

Weirdly out of place here, Cruise brings little daring and less charm to the film, though to be fair to the actor, his character’s a stiff: Nick Morton, an Army sergeant who secretly loots antiquities from Iraqi war zones, might have been a charismatic antihero in Drafts One or Five of a script credited to David Koepp , Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman (with story by Jon Spaihts , Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet ). But what made it to the screen is a watered-down version of “irresistible rogue” with all the irresistibility trimmed away.

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Accompanied by partner in crime Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), Morton is in Iraq pursuing treasures promised on a map he stole from archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis of Peaky Blinders ). Halsey catches up to Morton around the time his misadventures expose an ancient burial site, and she’s none too happy that he seduced her just to steal that map. After some low-stakes bickering, the two find themselves in the presence of a sarcophagus buried in, um, a giant pool of mercury. It’s an Egyptian coffin, interred far away in ancient Mesopotamia, so that’d be big news even before the gang grasps the supernatural nature of the desiccated corpse residing within.

To summarize: The body is that of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who was the sole heir to Egypt’s throne before her Pharaoh dad found a second wife and had a son. Furious that she wouldn’t be Queen, she vowed revenge, killing all three and making a pact with the bad-news Egyptian god Set. But before she could sacrifice a lover, who was to become the god’s human embodiment, she was captured and “mummified alive.” The ceremonial dagger with which she intended to make the sacrifice was split into two parts, putting its magic powers on hold until the about-to-wake-up Ahmanet can put the pieces together again.

Over in England, one piece of that dagger has just been found in a crypt dating back to the Second Crusade. It is taken by Crowe’s Jekyll, who seems to be the Dark Universe’s version of the Marvel movies’ Nick Fury: a behind-the-scenes player who has been fighting all kinds of evil for a long time, and who pops up when screenplays need exposition or a tease for the next film in the franchise. (Where Fury had secrets of a military-industrial-complex sort, Jekyll has a monstrous alter ego he must continually take drugs to subdue.)

'Mummy' Director Reveals 2 New Titles in Universal's Dark Universe

Somewhere between the discovery of the sarcophagus and the moment its inhabitant crawls out to start devouring the living, Ahmanet’s immortal spirit develops a fixation on Morton, deciding he’s “my chosen.” She gets into the poor jerk’s mind, forcing him to help her reassemble that dagger. If he understood that she planned to kill him with it, Morton might put up a bit more resistance to the mind-control.

It’s no surprise that the action to come has vastly more in common with the CGI bombast of the Brendan Fraser-starring Mummy films than the quiet, slow-creeping horror of the version Karl Freund directed in 1932. What is surprising is that this film’s action makes one slightly nostalgic for the 1999 incarnation, or at least prompts one to ask if it wasn’t maybe more fun than we gave it credit for. So much of the action takes place in monotonous half-light; so little of it displays even the ambition to show audiences something new — unless we count the Mummy’s eyes, which have two irises each, for no apparent reason other than somebody thought that would look cool on a movie poster. The most involving scene by far shows Morton swimming through underwater crypts, trying to save Halsey from Ahmanet before he either drowns or is destroyed by the zombie warriors swimming behind him.

But that sequence lasts just a minute or two, and is immediately followed by a Morton/Mummy standoff in which Cruise fails, rather spectacularly, to wring a laugh out of a kiss-off line one hopes neither Koepp, nor McQuarrie, nor Kussman would admit to having written. It’s the kickoff of a climax that requires more heroic self-sacrifice from Morton than we have any reason to believe he’s capable of. Unless, that is, we have a financial interest in the sequel set up by Jekyll’s longer-than-necessary final voiceover.

Production companies: Sean Daniel Company, Secret Hideout Distributor: Universal Cast: Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari Director: Alex Kurtzman Screenwriters: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman Producers: Sarah Bradshaw, Sean Daniel, Alex Kurtzman, Chris Morgan Executive producers: Jeb Brody, Roberto Orci Director of photography: Ben Seresin Production designers: Jon Hutman, Dominic Watkins Costume designer: Penny Rose Editors: Gina Hirsch, Paul Hirsch, Andrew Mondshein Composer: Brian Tyler Casting director: Lucinda Syson

Rated PG-13, 110 minutes

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The Mummy review – Tom Cruise returns in poorly bandaged corpse reviver

Framed as more of a superhero origin movie than ancient curse mystery, a messy plot unravels fast

B e afraid, for here it is … again … emerging waxily from the darkness. This disturbing figure must surely be thousands of years old by now, a princeling worshipped as a god but entombed in his own riches and status; remarkably well preserved. It is Tom Cruise, who is back to launch a big summer reboot of The Mummy, that classic chiller about the revived corpse from ancient Egypt, from which the tomb door was last prised off in a trilogy of films between 1999 and 2008 with the lantern-jawed and rather forgotten Brendan Fraser in the lead. And before that, of course, there were classic versions with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee both variously getting the all-over St John Ambulance treatment.

Traditionally, The Mummy is a scary movie (though unserious) about taboo and transgression, based on the made-up pop myth about the mummy’s “curse” – which has no basis in the history of ancient Egypt, but is a cheeky colonialist invention, which recasts local objection to our tomb-looting as something supernatural, malign and irrational.

Yet that is not what this Mummy is about. It brings in the usual element of sub-Spielberg gung-ho capers, but essentially sees The Mummy as a superhero origin movie; or possibly supervillain; or Batmanishly both. The supporting characters are clearly there to be brought back as superhero-repertory characters for any putative Mummy franchise, including one who may well be inspired by Two-Face from The Dark Knight.

This has some nice moments but is basically a mess, with various borrowings, including some mummified bits from An American Werewolf in London. The plot sags like an aeon-old decaying limb: a jumble of ideas and scenes from what look like different screenplay drafts. There are two separate ancient “tomb-sites” which have to be busted open: one in London and one in Iraq. (The London one, on the site of the Crossrail excavation, contains the remains of medieval knights identified as “crusaders” who have in their dead Brit mitts various strategically important jewels they have taken from Egyptians: who were subsequently buried in what is now Iraq. Erm, Egyptians in Iraq? Go figure. Perhaps it’s because they are evil and had to be taken out of the country, like CIA rendition of terror suspects.)

The Cruisemeister himself is left high and dry by plot lurches that trigger his boggle-eyed, WTF expression. In one scene, he is nude so we can see what undeniably great shape he’s in. The flabby, shapeless film itself doesn’t have his muscle-tone.

Cruise plays Nick Morton, an adorable rascal in the Iraqi warzone who goes around in a TE Lawrence headdress stealing antiquities to sell; well, it’s that or let them be destroyed. He’s helped by his exasperated buddy Chris (Jake Johnson), while Nick has already seduced beautiful expert Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) who in spite of herself is entranced by Nick’s distinctive cherubic handsomeness. Then they blunder across the extraordinary tomb of evil Egyptian sorceress Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) who has some kind of weirdo mind-meld experience with Nick. Her creepy spirit accompanies him back home where she is intent on getting that precious jewel to unlock her full power. Nick’s plane crashes, giving him the opportunity for some Mission: Impossible-type midair acrobatics, those gorgeous chops pulling some serious Gs.

Russell Crowe lumbers on at one stage, amply filling a three-piece suit, playing an archaeological expert and connoisseur of secret burial sites, who has some sinister connection with government agencies. Unlike Nick, he has no Indiana Jones-type heroism, and that formal attire of his signals that he does not have Nick’s kind of heroic looseness. He is a figure to be mistrusted, although when he reveals his name and his destiny, he is just a distraction – and silly.

In the end, having encouraged us to cheer for Tom Cruise as an all-around hero , the film tries to have it both ways and confer upon him some of the sepulchral glamour of evil, and he almost has something Lestat -ish or vampiric about him. Yet the film really won’t make up its mind. It’s a ragbag of action scenes which needed to be bandaged more tightly.

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The Mummy Movie Review

I never thought i'd yearn for the return of brendan fraser, but this version of the mummy deserves to be buried for all eternity..

A few weeks ago, I re-acquainted myself with the 1999 Mummy starring Brendan Fraser courtesy of Universal's spiffy new Ultra HD Blu-ray release, and while the intervening two decades haven't necessarily been kind to the once cutting-edge visual effects (doubly so in 4K), it's happily just as entertaining, tongue-in-cheek and as plain fun as it's always been.

But in light of my trip to 2017's newly rebooted film of the same name, its predecessor merely highlighted the many shortcomings of this newly reimagined version.

Robbed of the throne by the birth of a half-brother, Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) takes matters into her own hands and rights this perceived wrong, selling her soul to the vengeful God Set and murdering her entire family. But no crime goes unpunished, and Ahmanet soon finds sentenced to mummification for all eternity; that is, until then present-day Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) inadvertently brings her back to life, giving her the opportunity to complete her mission and bring Set to life in human form.

From both the perspective of a standalone film, as well as the opening salvo to what Universal is aggressively marketing as their 'Dark Universe'; a wider monster mash franchise which will ultimately include icons such as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Invisible Man, The Mummy is a complete and abject failure. In isolation, it's a boring, totally lopsided and narratively convoluted film, which comprehensively fails to engage the audience. As a would-be franchise kick-starter, it fares even worse.

Rather than allow the 'Dark Universe' to organically expand in its own time, ala the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the first, and undoubtedly the definitive standard for getting one of these things up), in their eagerness they've cast the net way too wide, stuffing it full of winks and nods to characters and events that will presumably pay off in future films. Unfortunately, their all-too-frequent nature only serves to slows the pace, bogging it down as they optimistically cram in another element that's utterly superfluous to this film in question.

Of course, the filmmakers should have focused more effort on making The Mummy first and foremost a good film, or at the very least an entertaining popcorn blockbuster. As it is, its heavily flawed, with only a few interesting action set pieces scattered amongst heavy and overly wrought exposition, bolted onto a storyline that tries exceptionally hard to avoid offending anyone with a politically correct bend, and which itself in knots.

It's also incredibly heavy handed for a summer blockbuster. For example, in the first five minutes alone, you get pummeled by flashbacks to English Crusader Knights, the dispatch of nearly an entire genealogy in Ancient Egypt and then a present-day attack by (presumably) ISIS insurgents and a bombing courtesy of the coalition of the willing. Jeez... all I wanted was a little fun.

While the film has managed to snag a very capable cast, it then proceeds to thoroughly waste them with unmemorable characters and shockingly bad dialogue. A curious casting decision from the get-go, the normally reliable Tom Cruise seems woefully miscast as the charmless Indiana Jones -type, while Anabelle Wallis gets precious little to do as his sometime rival and love interest. Despite taking the title role, Sofia Boutella's role amounts to quite a minor part in the whole feature, doing quite little other than cause very bad, and infrequently destructive events to occur.

Seriously, the character's role is so half-baked that it comes up quite poorly in comparison to Arnold Vosloo's freshly shaven scalp from the 1999 version. Russell Crowe inhibits the Nick Fury-like role of Dr. Henry Jekyll which will (might?) serve as the anchor of the Dark Universe films, but who's cameo is quite desperately shoe-horned into the already bloated narrative.

Director Alex Kurtman; until now best known as one-half of the writing duo who gave us the Star Trek reboot and the despicably awful Transformers sequel Revenge of the Fallen , steps behind the camera for the first time and suffice to say I think many of the film's inadequacies can be pinpointed to his lack of experience. I'm loathed to introduce gossip and innuendo in a theatrical review, but the on-set reports that Cruise step in during production to complete the film following concerns about Kurtzman's competency are entirely believable.

I never thought I'd yearn for the return of Brendan Fraser, but there it is. This Mummy should be buried for all eternity. Avoid at all costs.

PRICING: You can find products similar to this one for sale below.

Ben Gourlay

Ben joined the TweakTown team in 2008 and has since reviewed 100s of movies. Ben is based in Australia and has covered entertainment news and reviews since 2002. A student of film, Ben brings a wide understanding of the medium to the latest happenings in entertainment circles and the latest blockbuster theatrical reviews.

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Common sense media reviewers.

First Dark Universe monster movie is violent, uneven.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Could be seen as a cautionary tale about leaving w

The main character is a hard-drinking scoundrel/th

Frequent, loud fantasy/monster violence, with a fe

Male-and-female sensuality. Kissing. Lovers shown

A use of "s--t" and "a--hole."

Nothing in the movie, but part of a larger franchi

The main character quickly downs several glasses o

Parents need to know that The Mummy is a monster movie reboot starting Tom Cruise. It has very little to do with either the 1932 Boris Karloff version or the 1999 Brendan Fraser take on the story. Rather, it's the first in Universal's new "Dark Universe" series, which is planned to be an…

Positive Messages

Could be seen as a cautionary tale about leaving well enough alone -- i.e. "curiosity killed the cat."

Positive Role Models

The main character is a hard-drinking scoundrel/thief, but he does a few heroic things when the situation arises. As the movie ends, the jury's still out on him. The mummy is played by a woman (a first), but while she's powerful, she's not exactly a role model. Limited diversity within the cast.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent, loud fantasy/monster violence, with a few blood spatters. Neck slicing. Stabbing with knives, spears, and darts. Guns and shooting. Explosions. A flock of birds smashes through the front of a plane. Plane crash (not shown), car crash. Some jump-scares. Scary faces, relentless zombie attacks. A lab full of skeletons and other gross things.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Male-and-female sensuality. Kissing. Lovers shown in bed together. No nudity seen, but it's implied in several scenes. A mostly-obscured naked bottom. A man is naked, but nothing is seen beyond his torso and legs. Subtle, suggestive sex talk. A man stares at a woman's belly button. Brief flirting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A use of "s--t" and "a--hole." A use of "son of a bitch" (partly obscured by noise), plus "hell," "damn," and "oh my god" as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing in the movie, but part of a larger franchise with some associated merchandising/licensing.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The main character quickly downs several glasses of liquor in more than one scene, with no effect/impact or consequence.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Mummy is a monster movie reboot starting Tom Cruise . It has very little to do with either the 1932 Boris Karloff version or the 1999 Brendan Fraser take on the story . Rather, it's the first in Universal's new "Dark Universe" series, which is planned to be an interconnected franchise much like the DC and Marvel superhero movies. Expect fairly strong, very loud fantasy/action violence, with some blood spatters, guns and shooting, stabbings, fighting and punching, crashes and explosions, jump scares, zombies, and a lab full of gross things. There are several mildly suggestive sexual references, too, including partly naked and/or obscured male and female bodies, kissing, a couple shown in bed together, and sensuality. Language is infrequent but includes "a--hole" and "son of a bitch," as well as "hell" and "damn." The main character, who's presented as a hard drinker, quickly downs several glasses of liquor in more than one scene, with no effect. This film marks the first Universal Mummy movie to have the central monster played by a woman. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (20)
• Kids say (32)

Based on 20 parent reviews

Absolute waste of time

Way more violent and dark than i expected, too much for young teenagers or tweens., what's the story.

In THE MUMMY, Nick Morton ( Tom Cruise ) and Chris Vail ( Jake Johnson ) are military recon men who use their positions to hunt treasure in the Middle East and sell it on the black market. During one explosive mission, they discover an Egyptian tomb with a most unusual sarcophagus inside, heavily protected by a pool of mercury. Archeologist Jenny Halsey ( Annabelle Wallis ) and the two men liberate it. But a sandstorm arises, and a flock of birds smashes into their plane. Nick wakes up, miraculously alive but now cursed. He's now the "chosen one" of the mummy, a banished princess called Ahmanet ( Sofia Boutella ). She's bent on obtaining a special knife and gemstone to carry out a terrifying ritual, at the possible cost of Nick's life. Only Dr. Henry Jekyll ( Russell Crowe ) can help!

Is It Any Good?

The first entry in Universal's Dark Universe monster series gets things off to a so-so start; it tries to be a crowd-pleaser, but it seems its makers never decided exactly what kind of movie it is. Like the 1999 movie of the same name , The Mummy is an action movie above all. It casts Nick as a lovable scoundrel, and it makes many attempts at snappy humor between him and the other characters. There's also at least one clever fight scene. But aside from a couple of simple jump-scares and references to other monsters, it's not really a horror movie or a monster movie (it doesn't really care about the monster), and it probably won't warrant repeat viewings at Halloween time.

Director Alex Kurtzman has worked as a screenwriter on plenty of big, loud action movies (including two Transformers entries), but he's only helmed one other movie, the sentimental drama People Like Us . Though the FX department on The Mummy provided him with great-looking sandstorms, spiders, rats, undead soldiers, and other nifty things, he can't seem to balance the humor with the action or the action with the monsters. Some of it is confusing, dull, or both. Much of it is entertaining in separate chunks, but they don't add up to very much.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Mummy 's violence . Does it go over the top, or does it seem appropriate for the story? How did it make you feel? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

Is the movie scary ? What's the appeal of scary movies/monster movies?

Did you think about the fact that this was the first time the mummy has been played by a woman? What impact does that have on the story? The character?

Is the main character likable even though he's a thief? Why or why not? How do movies and TV shows make scoundrels sympathetic?

In two scenes, Nick drinks a lot, very quickly. Are there consequences? Why does that matter?

Movie Details

• In theaters : June 9, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : September 12, 2017
• Cast : Tom Cruise , Russell Crowe , Annabelle Wallis , Sofia Boutella
• Director : Alex Kurtzman
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence, action and scary images, and for some suggestive content and partial nudity
• Last updated : March 17, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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The Mummy movie review: This Tom Cruise film takes a lesson from Bollywood

The mummy movie review: what we are left with is our hero kicking up a lot of sound and fury, and sand, of course, with the promise of much more of the same to come. not actively awful, but not a barrel of silly fun either..

The Mummy movie cast: Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Jake Johnson The Mummy movie director: Alex Kurtzman

These are my top five takeaways from The Mummy reboot, fronted by the Cruise man, and a golden-eyed wraith who rises from the earth.

If you are a beautiful Egyptian princess buried alive, you are going to wake up scores of years later. Take it from us. And the first thing you will do is to look upon the face of a handsome stranger, and your hardened heart will melt. Sofia Boutella (not as striking as she was in her ‘Star Trek’ turn, but eye-catching still) plays the part of the New Mummy Rising with a permanent snarl-cum-wistfulness, tattoos running down her face. Because she is female, she has to be jealous of another woman who is vying for the attention of her man. Lesson: hell hath no fury like a mummy scorned.

Said handsome stranger played by Tom Cruise, a top gun in his mid-50s is the portrait of a star in search of a persona. What do you do, once you’ve done and dusted several mission impossible-s? Why, become a looking-for-a-main-chance-adventurer making eyes at a modern day archaeologist, and a mummy with a sexy bod whom he calls a ‘chick’. Did we say this was a sexist flick?

The impact of Bollywood is getting stronger, even if it shows up for a flash: the Egyptian princess walks on ancient sandy dunes just the way a series of Bolly beauties have whenever they are transported to a desert for a song-and-dance— acres of flowing robes streaming behind, metal bustiers to the fore, background music swelling. Who says schmaltzy Bollywood has no legs?

Taking that point further, who says you need a plot when you have such a svelte-looking mummy (once she cracks open her tomb), a blonde scientist, and a good-looking if weathered rogue larking about in Iraq and London, falling out of planes, and shooting people underground in London? Only problem, though, is that the moment all the frantic action stops, the film grinds to a halt.

You don’t even need a Russell Crowe to do his thing — swallow the screen — when you are a kick-starting a monster franchise (oh yeah, just wait for it). This must be the only film in which Crowe, after spouting some high-falutin’ rubbish about good and evil, just disappears into the scenery. What we are left with is our hero kicking up a lot of sound and fury, and sand, of course, with the promise of much more of the same to come. Not actively awful, but not a barrel of silly fun either.

By the pricking of my thumb, something evil this way comes. And goes, after a few thrills and spills, which includes, psst, a Cruise in the buff. Like, in the altogether. Fully.

Click for more updates and latest Hollywood News along with Bollywood and Entertainment updates . Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the World at The Indian Express .

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The Mummy Reviews

To update the mummy for our superhero moment, the 2017 movie erases the ambiguity of its predecessors.

Full Review | Feb 4, 2023

...a generic middle-of-the-road movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Less a "Dark Universe" than a dimly lit actionized blockbuster.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 4, 2022

A plastic product made by mercenaries, pimps and profiteers rather than filmmakers who give a damn.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 16, 2021

The Dark Universe and original monster squad deserve more than this underwhelming film.

Full Review | Jan 2, 2021

Many of the fight sequences are so chaotic that they conceal the nature of the choreography.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Dec 5, 2020

If you want Tom Cruise on autopilot, wait for the Top Gun sequel...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 5, 2020

Truly painful to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/4.0 | Sep 17, 2020

There's no curse about this. It's one of the most uninspiring films of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 26, 2020

For all of its large scale and bluster, The Mummy's biggest flaw is that it's not fun or exciting enough. It tries, all right, but something's just not there, that intangible something that sets this kind of movie apart from the pack.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2020

Mindless is one thing, but stupid and regressive are something else entirely.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 1, 2020

This movie was one hundred percent, pure, cold garbage.

Full Review | May 12, 2020

This movie was charmless.

It's the film that launches many others, and as a result, a lot is riding on its success, both financially and as a starting-off point. As a result, it feels like a movie made by committee.

Full Review | May 7, 2020

The Mummy is a LOT of fun. This is due to the fact that it commits to a very specific tone right off the bat all the way through to the end.

Full Review | Mar 25, 2020

Did they make a film they can be proud of and that will stand the test of time? No, but they created value for their shareholders.

Full Review | Feb 19, 2020

And that, children, is why the new Mummy movie sucks.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2020

podcast review

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 11, 2020

Absolute garbage from beginning to end.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2019

The Mummy is a big budget endeavor meant to bring Universal into the comic book era. All those multi-genre elements exist, but the joy of going to the movies, the wonder of being touched by human elements does not.

Full Review | Nov 6, 2019

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Drama , Horror , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• June 9, 2017
• Tom Cruise as Nick Morton; Russell Crowe as Dr. Henry Jekyll; Annabelle Wallis as Jenny Halsey; Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet; Jake Johnson as Chris Vail

Home Release Date

• September 12, 2017
• Alex Kurtzman

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

The Mummy opens in ancient Egypt as a powerful Pharaoh learns that his mistress and high priest have been fooling around behind his back. He confronts the pair, who respond by stabbing him to death. Before the guards can apprehend her, the mistress takes her own life, confident that her sorcerer/lover will resurrect her. But before the dark priest known as Imhotep can complete the task, he is seized by authorities who cut out his tongue, mummify him alive and bury him in a sarcophagus full of voracious scarabs.

Flashforward 3000 years to the 1920s. Despite the best efforts of warriors committed to keeping the hidden ruins of Hamunaptra a secret (and the mummy in his tomb), treasure seekers find the lost city of the dead, read from a book of the dead and, well, wake the dead. Needless to say, Imhotep—without his morning coffee—rises in a really bad mood and goes on a vengeful rampage against the people who interrupted his multi-millennial snooze. Led by Indiana Jones-wannabe Rick O’Connell, the group must defeat the slowly regenerating corpse before Imhotep kills them all and resurrects his forbidden love. It’s a slam-bang special effects-fest that relies less on plot than on action that piles up a considerable body count.

Positive Elements: Moments of heroism and self-sacrifice. One character’s chronic disloyalty is held in low esteem. Modest flirtation between Rick and Evelyn avoids sexual overtones or innuendoes.

Spiritual Content: When cornered by the mummy, a conniving, weaselly man rattles through a necklace full of religious icons (including a cross and the star of David), reciting a prayer to each in hopes of escaping violent death. Imhotep is able to recreate plagues that God used to punish Egypt (locusts, flies, water to blood, darkness). In a climactic ceremony, Imhotep uses incantations and other occult means—including a human sacrifice—in an attempt to restore life to his mummified lover. He summons the undead to do battle with Rick (a scene reminiscent of the sword-wielding skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts ) and is only thwarted when someone chants from another magical book.

Sexual Content: No sex, but the Pharaoh’s mistress appears in a see-through mesh top and thong bottom (basically, naked). Someone uses a crude expression for genitalia.

Violent Content: Pretty much non-stop. At times The Mummy plays like a blast-anything-that-moves video game. Numerous men die in gunfights or at the points of swords during flurries of mass brutality and war. Some are stabbed with knives. Others catch fire. Rick survives being hung from gallows, though his fall through the platform is disturbingly explicit. Hungry beetles burrow underneath people’s skin and eat them from the inside out, or swarm over bodies like a school of piranha, leaving a mess of bone and sinew. Slaves are melted by acid. Once Imhotep shakes the dust off and reenters the world, he starts sucking the life out of people in order to consume their organs and regenerate himself (one poor soul survives having his eyes gouged out and his tongue removed before Imhotep finishes him off). After a man dies in a plane crash, his body and the aircraft both sink into quicksand. Rick severs Imhotep’s arm, but the monster reaches down and reattaches the limb. The movie’s sizable body count—and high gross-out quotient—almost make it easy to overlook “unspectacular” violence including several fistfights and a scene in which the film’s heroes drive recklessly through a crowded marketplace and mow down slow-moving locals.

Crude or Profane Language: Evelyn asks Rick for a vow of honesty by prompting, “Do you swear?” He replies, “Every d— day.” Still, the language is surprisingly restrained for a PG-13 release. There’s quite a bit of mild profanity, but no s- or f-words. Christian viewers will take exception to several exclamatory uses of the Lord’s name.

Drug and Alcohol Content: Occasional alcohol use is aggravated by three scenes that play drunkenness for laughs.

Other Negative Elements: Accused of being deceptive, Jonathan tells his sister, Evelyn, “I lie to everybody. What makes you so special?” Lots of emaciated corpses litter the screen. Some moments exist solely to disgust squeamish viewers, such as the scene in which a partially decayed Imhotep kisses Evelyn on the mouth, or when he eliminates the annoying scarab traveling through his neck and toward his brain by crunching down on it with his rotting teeth. Yuck.

Summary: The Mummy staggers for a number of reasons. First, it dares audiences to think of the various time-honored serials and matinee favorites it’s ripping off. For example, a scene on a burning boat seemed to be an imitation of the engulfed tavern sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark (right down to the last-minute rescue of a vital map-producing artifact from the flames). Second, The Mummy is an uneven attempt at being an action-adventure/horror/comedy/romance all wrapped up in one. It loses its bearings about halfway through when its sense of humor takes over like a class clown who just doesn’t know when to quit. It descends into silliness. Sure, there are a few funny moments and some really wild special effects (fully exploited in Universal’s thrilling theatrical trailer), but that’s about it. Once Christian families factor in lots of violence and dark, occult overtones, it becomes obvious that this film is pointless entertainment that’s especially inappropriate for the 8- to 14-year-old boys most likely to be attracted to such incoherent eye-candy.

Positive Elements

Nick Morton is Ahmanet’s official rope-looser. The mummy appreciates the gesture so much that she selects Nick as her next “beloved”—that is, the guy she’s going to kill to introduce Set to the world. And because of Ahmanet’s ability to weasel into his mind, Nick sometimes seems just fine with that. He’s described as a perfect vessel for Set, given his lack of morals and his dearth of consideration for anyone but himself.

But Jenny, the archaeologist, believes that underneath his rough exterior, Nick’s an OK guy. “I knew there was more to you than money,” she says.

No, no, sorry. That’s Princess Leia in Star Wars . (Wrong notes.) No, Jenny says, “Somewhere, fighting to get out, is a good man.” And turns out, she’s right: Nick turns from a selfish treasure-hunter into a self-sacrificing do-gooder. And he eventually shows a willingness to sacrifice pretty much everything—body, soul and spirit—for Jenny when the Egyptian chips are down.

There are a few others who’d like to prevent the end of the world, too, if possible. Dr. Henry Jekyll is especially keen to do so, even though he knows it means making some uncomfortable sacrifices himself.

Spiritual Elements

Take a load off and set a spell, while I talk about Set and spells.

Set, as mentioned, is the Egyptian god of death. (Or god of the desert, war, storms, chaos, wind, war, darkness, disorder, violence, etc., etc., depending on which source you look at.) Jekyll calls him out as evil and says that Christians call the very same guy Satan and Lucifer. But rather than follow the Christian idea that Satan and evil are already actively influencing our world, Jekyll characterizes evil as lurking just outside it, looking for a way to come in.

Set has found a way into this realm through Ahmanet, who prays to the god and performs rites in his honor, and is thus rewarded with supernatural power. Her body is magically riddled with black, unreadable glyphs, and she’s apparently granted immortality as well (though the years do take a toll on her eventually). Some animals (birds, rats, spiders) seem to do her bidding, and she has the ability to control certain minds (sometimes through spider bites). She’s also able to call on the sand itself—including, apparently, sand grains of it that have been melted into glass. But perhaps her most fearsome ability is her knack for raising folks from the dead, who subsequently serve her as her shambling, zombie-like minions.

We also learn that hundreds of years earlier, some Christian Crusaders found Ahmanet’s crypt and spirited away her magic dagger (given to her by Set), hiding the blade in the statue of an angel (called a reliquary by Jenny) and a magic gem from its pommel in a Crusader grave. We assume that the Crusaders did this because they understood Ahmenet’s nature and wanted to keep a critical source of her power away from her.

Elsewhere, presumably Islamic fighters shoot up and deface ancient artifacts, mimicking the destruction we’ve seen from ISIS fighters. We hear that pharaohs were worshiped as “living gods.” Some scenes take place in old Christian churches and tombs. There’s talk about “angering the gods.”

[ Spoiler Warning ] Nick eventually gets stabbed by Ahmanet’s magical dagger, which infects him with the spirit of Set. His human side seems to keep the Set side of him at bay while still allowing Nick to use Set’s powers, including resurrecting a couple of people close to him.

Sexual Content

Back in ancient Egypt, Ahmanet prays to Set naked: We see her nude form from the back and side in a handful of flashbacks. Even when she wears clothes back then, the robes are fairly gauzy and revealing. A lot of her skin (and sometimes bone and muscle) is visible after she’s mummified, too: When she looks like her younger self, the bandages are wrapped tightly around her in strategic areas, accentuating her figure rather than hiding it. She sometimes straddles her lovers/victims, running her hands down their chests suggestively. She both kisses and licks men.

Nick wakes up in a morgue, naked. (We see him from the side, but his genitals are obscured either by his hands or strategically placed tables.) Nick and Jenny also have a history. They banter suggestively about a the details of a one-night-stand they had in Bagdad. When Jenny accidentally reveals her midriff, Nick ogles her.

Violent Content

Ahmanet wasn’t a gentle woman even when she was just a mortal woman. We see her skirmish with others in the Egyptian desert, knocking men down painfully with poles. She holds a knife to the Pharaoh’s throat (though we don’t see her make the cut that comes next). A baby dies by her hand, too: Again, we don’t see the deed itself, but dark blood sprays tellingly across her contorted face. She’s just about to plunge a dagger into her lover when she’s caught; several darts puncture her neck, and hooks connected to cords pierce her body (though not in a particularly bloody fashion).

Once freed from her coffin, Ahmanet rejuvenates by pressing her lips to the mouths of innocents and literally sucking the life out of them. Her victims morph into mummy-like husks, which then rise and follow her. These creatures—as well as other dead bodies that Ahmanet raises—battle Nick and others. They fling themselves through car windows and swim after folks in water. They’re stubborn opponents, and even dismembering them doesn’t stop their attack. Nick sometimes thwacks off arms or heads or most of their bodies, and they still come. Nick sometimes kicks through their bodies or crushes their heads into billowing dust.

Ahmanet still rumbles, too. Blessed (cursed?) with superhuman strength, she can literally throw people around and smash massive tree limbs into splinters. At one point, she practically breaks Nick’s leg, too. (Nick, perhaps through supernatural means, seems physically fine afterwards.)

A plane crashes. Several people are either sucked out or die in the crash, and we see their bodies in a morgue later. Someone’s stabbed to death. Another man gets shot three times. Still another character, perhaps in an hallucigenic state, is attacked by writhing hordes of rats that cover his body. Someone drowns. Nick has an extended melee with another character.

Dr. Jekyll imprisons Ahmanet for a time: She’s again darted with hooks attached to cords and chained in a large room, where workers apparently inject her body with freezing mercury. “It hurts!” she complains loudly.

Soldiers shoot Ahmanet without effect. Nick and his friend Chris get pinned down during a gunfight. A sandstorm sends cars and busses flying and people scurrying for safety. Explosions go boom. Birds crash through plane windows; one leaves a bloody mark.

Crude or Profane Language

One s-word and a few other profanities, including “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—,” “p-ss” and the British profanity “bloody.” God’s name is misused seven times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Jenny and Nick spend time in a pub. Nick downs shots and chases them with beer. Other folks are shown drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages.

Other Negative Elements

Nick and Chris are not archaeologists, but treasure hunters who raid ancient tombs and sell what they find there on the black market. Nick learns about Ahmanet’s tomb, actually, only after stealing a letter from Jenny.

Ahmanet vomits mercury.

On one level, you could say that The Mummy is about Nick—a wayward, moral-free treasure hunter who finds, in the end, a certain level of compassion, humanity, love and redemption. He’s asked to make sacrifices. And in time, he develops a willingness to answer that call.

And that’s all great … as far as it goes.

On another level, though—and this is really the level that counts— The Mummy is a mindless exercise in CGI wonder and PG-13 horror. It delivers action sequences strung together with just the barest thread of a plot or even reason. While it presents itself as a standard summer blockbuster (and, indeed, Universal has planned The Mummy as the first of a new franchise of classic monster reboots), it’s both surprisingly sexual and surprisingly frightening. The movie’s muddy spirituality should give many families pause, as well.

Mostly, though, this movie just felt confused . Its internal logic is inconsistent. Scenes show up for really no real reason at all—feeling about as stuffed in there as a walrus in spandex.

There’s no compelling reason why The Mummy should exist at all, really, other than to line Universal’s pockets. Sure, the same could be said for lots of would-be blockbusters, but most still want to tell a reasonably good, or at least sensible, story. You’ll find precious little sense in this flick. Perhaps it should’ve been kept under wraps.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Is The Mummy: Resurrection With Keanu Reeves Real or Fake? 2024 Movie Speculation Explained

The Mummy: Resurrection trailer starring Keanu Reeves has many wondering if the film is fact or fiction.

In 1999, Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz thrilled and chilled audiences with The Mummy , an action-adventure-tinted take on the classic cinematic monster movie series of the same name.

The movie put Fraser on the map and was nothing less than a smash hit, spawning two sequels that were ultimately subject to diminishing returns. A Tom Cruise -focused reboot occurred in 2017 that many agree was not the film they were hoping for.

A New Mummy Movie Starring Keanu Reeves?

A new trailer for a film called The Mummy: Resurrection lurched its way onto YouTube, raking in an impressive number of views. This is thanks, in part, to its supposed star, the über-fan-favorite Keanu Reeves .

Unfortunately, for fans of Universal’s horror/adventure franchise, no new Mummy movie, remake, reboot, sequel, or otherwise is being developed, much less being kept under wraps (Get it?)

Additionally, this is not even the first instance of a bogus Mummy trailer surfacing on the internet. Another Mummy: Resurrection preview cropped up a few months back , with this one claiming to feature the ubiquitous Dwayne Johnson as its lead.

There was an attempt made at a new installment several years ago in 2017. It starred Mission: Impossible ’s own Tom Cruise. But not even Cruise’s magnetic box office draw was enough to get butts in theater seats and The Mummy flopped hard.

The 2017 remake was also supposed to get Universal’s ill-fated Dark Universe off the ground. The Dark Universe was intended to cash in on the interconnected type of storytelling popularized by Marvel’s MCU. 

This did not work out for the studio either, and an infamous Dark Universe cast photo wound up becoming an internet laughingstock.

In 2022, Brendan Fraser, who starred in all three parts of the original Mummy trilogy from the late ‘90s/early 2000s, remarked to Variety that he’d be “open” to doing a fourth film, but admitted that he wasn’t quite sure “how it would work:”

“I don’t know how it would work. But I’d be open to it if someone came up with the right conceit.”

As for Keanu Reeves, although he won’t be taking on the Mummy, he does have several upcoming projects in the pipeline. These include the Jonah Hill-directed comedy Outcome and a fifth film in the now-iconic John Wick series.

Reeves will also provide the voice of Shadow, the Blue Blur’s notorious black-and-red quilled rival in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for Paramount . Sonic 3 arrives in December.

Where Have Universal’s Classic Monsters Been Lurking?

Beginning in the 1930s, Universal Studios made household names out of several legendary figures in horror, such as Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and yes, the Mummy.

The movies produced about these characters proved so popular that a myriad of spin-offs, sequels, merchandise, and even a Saturday morning cartoon or two were made.

But nowadays, these titans of terror have largely fallen out of favor, with new-age replacements in the form of Ghostface from the Scream franchise and Jigsaw of Saw fame.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Times change and pop culture changes in lockstep. But longtime devotees surely yearn for a simpler era, one which existed even further back from ’80s slashers like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees.

Matters are likely not helped by the fact that much of the modern-day stabs at the Mummy and his ilk have been met with underwhelming box office returns. The classic monsters now mostly existing in the public domain are not much of a benefit either since this makes the waters very easily muddied.

Who knows, though? Perhaps Brendan Fraser will strap on Rick O’Connell’s shoulder holsters again and appear in another Mummy sequel that continues the storyline from 2008’s Tomb of the Dragon Emperor . Time will tell.

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Screen Rant

7 ways 1999's the mummy was almost entirely different.

The Mummy was a box office smash when it was released in 1999, but the horror/action-adventure film was almost radically different.

• 1999's The Mummy was almost a very different movie.
• Stephen Sommers almost didn't direct The Mummy , with Wes Craven, Clive Barker, and George A. Romero almost helming the film.
• Brendan Fraser was almost not cast as the lead in the movie, with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt also being offered the part.

The Mummy went through a lot of evolution and change during the development and production of the film, which almost resulted in a very different movie. Boris Karlof's The Mummy was one of the foundational pieces of the Universal Movie Monster franchise, inspiring several films in that franchise. When the time came to reimagine the film decades later though, Universal was more torn on how to proceed. After over a decade in various stages of development, The Mummy was released in 1999 to massive box office success.

The film focuses on the ancient Imhotep being awoken in the 1920s, with only a handful of explorers, archeologists, and scoundrels capable of stopping him from bringing chaos and destruction to the world. The movie's unique blend of action, adventure, romance, and horror made it an instant audience favorite, generating several sequels and spin-offs. However, the film that came to be wasn't anything like the earlier proposals for a remake of The Mummy , which went through several changes in tone, focus, and setting. Here are the biggest ways The Mummy was almost a very different movie.

10 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching Brendan Fraser's The Mummy Trilogy

7 stephen sommers almost didn't direct the mummy, several legendary horror directors almost helmed the mummy.

The Mummy changed many times during development and production, almost becoming several different types of films before it reached theaters. This evolving approach to the material reflects the numerous directors who were approached or briefly attached to the Universal Monster Movie remake. Plans to remake The Mummy began over a decade before the film was released in 1999. Long before Stephen Sommers came on board to write and direct the film, several other notable filmmakers were given the opportunity. An early potential filmmaker approached was Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero, who was approached film multiple times.

After the successful theatrical release of Hellraiser , Clive Barker was brought on. However, Universal balked at Barker's ideas for the film . Gremlins director Joe Dante was briefly attached to the project, but Universal passed on his version of the film due to concerns about budget constraints. Wes Craven was also approached about the project but turned down the opportunity to direct the movie. This left the door open in 1997 for Stephen Sommers to pitch his dream version of the film, which shifted genres somewhat to incorporate action-adventure elements into the remake.

6 The Mummy Was Almost Set In The Modern-Day

Budgetary reasons almost kept the mummy from being a period piece.

A frequent sticking point with Universal Studios during the development of The Mummy stemmed from the potential price tag associated with the movie. This extended to the setting and time-period of the story. Stephen Sommers' film largely takes place in 1926, giving the film a deliberate throwback vibe. Other filmmakers had also debated making the movie a period piece. However, Universal repeatedly fought against this concept , citing the budgetary complications caused by setting a film in a different period than the modern day. Screenwriter Abbie Bernstein's version of The Mummy was among the earliest proposals for the film.

Bernstein's take would have seen the supernatural creature brought back to life by modern-day scientists. Barker, Dante, and Romero's versions of The Mummy would also have utilized a modern setting. The idea of setting the film in the past was brought up by screenwriter Mick Garris, who had written the screenplay for Barker's proposed take on the project and returned in 1995 to pen a new script. Although Garris ultimately left the film, Universal ran with the idea of turning the film into a period piece — which fit perfectly into Sommers' idea for an adventure-driven take on the premise.

5 The Mummy Was Almost A Straight Horror Film

How the mummy became an adventure movie instead of just a horror film.

Sommers' concept for an action-adventure version of The Mummy proved to be a rousing success, leading to a huge box office win for Universal and the subsequent Mummy franchise. Despite the more rousing and charming elements of the movie, The Mummy still retains the creative DNA of the original horror film . Imhotep is a genuinely frightening villain when he wants to be, and the imagery at times remains unsettling over two decades later. Other ideas for The Mummy didn't have the same tonal balance as Sommer's concept. Instead, earlier conceptions for The Mummy kept the remake firmly rooted in the horror genre.

Universal's original plans for The Mummy were described as being akin to The Terminator . This would have made Imhotep into a far less compelling character, instead utilizing the titular Mummy as an unstoppable killing force rather than a tragic villain driven by lost love. Clive Barker's approach to the story would have been tonally closer to Hellraiser , with a dark and sexual story that made Universal execs uneasy. George A. Romero's second approach to the concept would have been influenced by his zombie films, which proved too violent for Universal.

The Mummy's Most Terrifying Creature Is (Sort Of) Based On Real Life

4 brenden fraser almost didn't play rick o'connell, tom cruise was almost in 1999's the mummy instead of 2017's version.

Rick O'Connell is the unlikely heart and soul of The Mummy . Played by Brendan Fraser with a snarky charm, O'Connell's rough edges and big heart make him an ideal hero for the film. Fraser plays the character well, shifting easily alongside the movie's different tonal beats. Fraser was far from the initial pick for the part , though. Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, and Tom Cruise were all offered the part of Rick, but turned it down due either to other commitments or lack of interest in the project. Notably, Tom Cruise later starred in 2017's The Mummy .

Fraser was eventually approached as an ideal fit from both a financial and artistic standpoint. The success of George of the Jungle proved to Universal that Fraser could headline a theatrical film, all while his relatively smaller star power made him a far more affordable actor to bring onto the project. Sommers was specifically impressed by Fraser's charms , comparing him to the swashbuckling heroes of old cinema like Errol Flynn. The result was a fun performance that the entire film relies on, and one that Fraser delivered well.

3 The Medjai Of The Mummy Were Almost Very Different

Ardeth bay almost didn't survive the ending of the mummy.

The Medjai in The Mummy are a centuries-old order of warriors who work to keep the evil of Imhotep from infecting the rest of the world. Based on a real-life order of royal guards in ancient Egypt, The Mummy 's Medjai are largely represented by Ardeth Bay. Bay serves as an exposition dump for the film's lore while also providing a helping hand in the climax of the film, fighting alongside the heroes against Imhotep and his undead warriors. Played by Oded Fehr in the film, Ardeth and the Medjai as a whole went through several changes during production.

Initially, the Medjai were going to be portrayed as being tattooed across their entire bodies. However, Sommers decided this would have covered up too much of Fehr's body, and changed the tattoos to be more specifically placed. Ardeth was also meant to die in the film. In Sommers's original script, Ardeth would have not survived the battle with Imhotep's forces. Sommers grew to see the character as too heroic to simply die like that and changed the ending of the script so that he survived . This allowed Ardeth to appear in The Mummy Returns .

What Went Wrong With The Mummy: 10 Ways The Franchise Got Worse After Brendan Fraser's 1999 Debut

2 the film's original narration was almost read by imhotep, why it's important that imhotep didn't tell his own story.

Changes occurred to The Mummy even after the final cast and crew were assembled. This can be seen from the very beginning of the film, with the opening shot changing during production. The opening sequence recounts the origins of Imhotep in ancient Egypt. It was initially intended for Imhotep to recount the story himself, serving as the narrator for the film's opening. However, Sommers ultimately decided that it wouldn't make sense for Imhotep to tell the story in English. Instead, while Imhotep remained the focus of The Mummy 's opening scene , the narration was given to Ardeth instead.

This works on several levels, even beyond the clear disconnect of having Imohtep speaking perfect English despite his ancient ways and perspective. By creating a disconnect between Imhotep the character and Imhotep the storytelling, audiences get to witness the tragedy and horror of his story from a completely neutral place. It also establishes Ardeth as a storyteller and keeper of legends , befitting the role he eventually plays in the film. The implication that Imhotep's fate has been passed down through generations of the Medjai adds to the lived-in sensation of the film, expanding the world of the story.

1 Evy & Jonathan's Father Was Almost Based On A Real-Life Archeologist

The mummy almost had a direct connection to king tut.

The Medjai aren't the only historical reference in The Mummy . The movie makes use of the French Foreign Legion in Rick O'Connell's introductory scene, and Winston Havelock is established as being a veteran of the First World War. However, Evy and Jonathan were almost directly connected to a major historical figure. In The Mummy , Evy and Jonathan are established as the children of an explorer who died prior to the events of the film. In earlier scripts of The Mummy , their father was confirmed to be George Herbert. Herbert was an English aristocrat with a historically important interest in Egyptology.

Herbert was a major financial backer for several excavations in Egypt. This included the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, which remains one of the most iconic collections of ancient Egyptian artifacts ever discovered. By the time The Mummy was completed, this connection to Herbert was replaced with the more average family name of Carnahan. However, the movie still found a way to reference the Herbet family, as Evy was named after Herbert's real-life daughter , who accompanied him on several visits to Egypt. This way, The Mummy still references real-life history in unexpected ways.

The Mummy (1999)

The Mummy (1999) is an action/adventure/fantasy film directed by Stephen Sommers that stars Brendan Fraser as the dashing Rick O'Connell, an adventurer who always manages to get into trouble. Back in 1290 BC, Imhotep killed Pharaoh Seti I with the help of his wife, Anck-Su-Namun, and the two of them died with the promise to reunite in the future. Fast forward to the 1900s, siblings Jonathan and Evelyn acquire a map that will lead them to the lost city of Hamunaptra. Rick, wanting his map back, cuts a deal with them, agreeing to travel together for the promise of untold treasures. However, Hamunaptra is where Imhotep is and accidentally resurrects the now ancient mummified priest, who seeks to restore his body and revive his lost love. Rick, Jonathan, and Evelyn will have to battle with ancient mummies, death traps, and more to stop the return of Imhotep.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the mummy returns.

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It is a curiosity of movie action that too much of it can be boring. Imagine yourself on a roller coaster for two hours. After the first 10 minutes, the thrills subside. The mistake of "The Mummy Returns" is to abandon the characters, and to use the plot only as a clothesline for special effects and action sequences. If it were not for references to " The Mummy " (1999), this sequel would hardly have a plot at all.

Nine years have passed. Brendan Fraser is back again as Egyptologist Rick O'Connell, and Rachel Weisz , the librarian he met in the first film, is now his wife; they have an 8-year-old son named Alex (Freddie Boath). Also back are John Hannah as the twitty brother-in-law Jonathan and Arnold Vosloo as the mummy Imhotep, whose name sounds more than ever like an ancient Egyptian chain of pancake houses. Oded Fehr is the worried sage Ardeth Bay, who begins sentences ominously with "It is written that. . ." until Rick finally snaps, "Where is all this written?" A good question, since much of the story involves a magical pyramid of which it is written, "No one who has seen it has ever returned alive." That logically leads us to wonder how they ever found out about it. But logic applied to this movie will drive you mad. So will any attempt to summarize the plot, so I will be content with various observations: 

1. The ads give the Rock, the World Wrestling Federation star, equal billing with Fraser. This is bait-and-switch. To call his appearance a "cameo" would be stretching it. He appears briefly at the beginning of the movie, is transmuted into a kind of transparent skeletal wraith and disappears until the end of the film, when he comes back as the dreaded Scorpion King. I am not sure, at the end, if we see the real Rock or merely his face, connected to computer-generated effects (his scorpion is blown up to giant size, which has the unfortunate effect of making him look more like a lobster tail than a scorpion). I continue to believe the Rock has an acting career ahead of him, and after seeing this movie I believe it is still ahead of him.

2. Alex, the kid, adds a lot to the movie by acting just like a kid. I particularly enjoyed it when he was kidnapped by a fearsome adversary of his parents, chained and taken on a long journey, during which he drove his captor crazy by incessantly asking, "Are we there yet?" 

3. The dialogue "You have started a chain reaction that could bring about the next Apocalypse" is fascinating. Apparently we missed the first Apocalypse, which does not speak well for it.

4. I have written before of the ability of movie characters to outrun fireballs. In "The Mummy Returns," there is a more amazing feat. If the rising sun touches little Alex while he is wearing the magical bracelet, he will die (it is written). But Rick, carrying Alex in his arms, is able to outrace the sunrise; we see the line of sunlight moving on the ground right behind them. It is written by Eratosthenes that the Earth is about 25,000 miles around, and since there are 24 hours in a day, Rick was running approximately 1,041 miles an hour.

5. One of the big action sequences involves a battle between two vast armies, which stretch as far as computer-generated effects can see. One army is human. The other army is made of countless creatures named Anubis that look like giant savage dogs that stand upright and run on their hind legs (it is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all). These armies clash in bloody swordplay. Each dog-creature, as it is killed, reverts to the desert sand from whence it sprang. Finally all the creatures are destroyed, and we see the victors standing around feeling victorious and wishing that high-fives had been invented. And we notice that not one single member of the victorious army is dead or even wounded. Pathetic, that thousands of years of ancient curses and spells could engender such an incompetent army of dog-sand-creatures.

6. Several readers have argued with the rule in Ebert's Little Movie Glossary that teaches us, "no good movie has ever featured a hot-air balloon." To be sure, there are exceptions, but "The Mummy Returns" is not one of them. Its hot-air balloon looks like the ship that sailed to the land of Wynken, Blynken and Nod.

7. At one point the action returns to London, and we see Tower Bridge, the dome of St. Paul's and Big Ben clustered closely together in one shot. This is no doubt to make it easy for the geographically challenged. Perhaps adding a few snapshots from Madonna's wedding would not have been too much.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The Mummy Returns (2001)

Rated PG-13 For Adventure Action and Violence

121 minutes

Rachel Weisz as Evelyn

Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay

Brendan Fraser as Rick

The Rock as The Scorpion King

John Hannah as Jonathan

Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep

Written and Directed by

• Stephen Sommers

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An ambient horror slasher that methodically depicts the enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness. An ambient horror slasher that methodically depicts the enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness. An ambient horror slasher that methodically depicts the enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness.

• Andrea Pavlovic
• Cameron Love
• 3 User reviews
• 17 Critic reviews
• 65 Metascore

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• Apr 16, 2024
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• Runtime 1 hour 34 minutes

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