Universal’s bid to create a Dark Universe populated by the studio’s iconic monsters gets off to a promising start with a visually creative and surprisingly fresh take on Mummy mythology that’s far removed from the 1932 original and Brendan Fraser remake.
Where both of those were period pieces, the big difference here is a gender switch for the monster. The eponymous Egyptian is Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), mummified alive for a heinous act and unearthed in the present day by Tom Cruise’s soldier of fortune. Now on the loose in London, Ahmanet seeks an ancient gem that will summon the God of Death, with her eye on Cruise as a suitable vessel for this dark entity. Enter Russell Crowe’s Dr. Henry Jekyll (and alter ego, of course), who wants to capture the Mummy for his own experiments; he’s the connective tissue that will bind this Dark Universe together. A mix of olde worlde horror and contemporary blockbuster razzmatazz, it’s a case of Mummy: Impossible, but the good news is this fledgling franchise appears to be shaping up as a modern day Penny Dreadful rather than turning its classic creatures into the horror equivalent of the MCU.