The Mummy (2017)

Ah, the Dark Universe. Out of all the attempts to cash in on the phenomena that was the MCU for many years, none have ever been more of an abortion than this attempt by Universal to resurrect its classic monsters. Many will say this was a "shared universe" that no one asked for, and they probably didn't, but as someone who loves those old horror films and monsters, I wasn't entirely against the concept, if it were done right. The problem is that cinematic universes come about in one of two ways, either unintentionally, as happened in the 40's era of Universal Horror and with Toho's Showa era kaiju timeline (and, to some extent, the MonsterVerse), or they're strategically planned out from the beginning, as Kevin Feige did with the MCU; Universal didn't seem to know what they were doing, given the confusion over whether or not Dracula Untold should be considered part of the Dark Universe, and were just winging it. That leads to the decision to officially kick it off with this film, which I found baffling. Out of all the Universal monsters you could've used to inaugurate this universe, why, in God's name, would you reboot one at the center of a series that was still quite fresh in the public consciousness? While The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor may have been the lowest grossing entry in that series, it still made money, and yet, it was only four years later that Universal announced they were rebooting the franchise, and not too long after that, it was announced as the start of the Dark Universe. Moreover, those Brendan Fraser movies, despite having begun right before the Millennium, are still quite popular and well-remembered, and are often played on television, especially the first one. It's like when, just five years after Spider-Man 3, Sony rebooted that series with The Amazing Spider-Man; it felt totally pointless and asinine. Because of that, as well as the news that it was going to star Tom Cruise, I had no interest in seeing this thing. I know I saw the trailer before some movie (likely either Rogue One or Kong: Skull Island), but I just rolled my eyes and was like, "Whatever." The bad reviews, details I heard about the movie's plot, and it flat-out bombing gave me confidence that I'd made the right choice, and like Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Dracula Untold, it wasn't until I decided on this year's theme that I saw it for the first time.

So, would I say this movie is worse than Dracula Untold? No, not quite. I don't think I'd even say it's worse than Van Helsing, as you can see in how this is not an entry in Movies That Suck. The big difference is that Van Helsing was an awesome idea that was badly executed, whereas this, even if it had been successful and the Dark Universe had gone on, was always going to come off like an uninspired, corporate cash-grab and a terribly unoriginal start. At the end of the day, while the movie is certainly well-made enough, with high-production values, some nice action sequences and setpieces, and does lean more into the horror side of things than even the first Stephen Sommers movie, as I watch it, I'm thinking to myself, "I've seen this all before." The story feels the same, as does the mythology, there are moments where it steals directly from the Fraser movies, as well as other, much better flicks, the references to other Universal horror movies in the attempt to build this universe are sometimes eye-rolling, and as per usual, the amount of bad CGI is rather egregious. It also doesn't help that my own personal bias against Tom Cruise, and the knowledge that he completely took this movie over, prevents me from enjoying his character, despite some, admittedly, nice moments on his part.

A London construction project unearths an ancient tomb housing a number of Crusader Knights. Shortly after its discovery, the construction crew is forced out by a mysterious group, headed by a man named Henry, who has spent his life unearthing mankind's darkest secrets. The tomb is connected to Ahmanet, an Ancient Egyptian princess whose ruthless ambition and desire for power led her to make a pact with the god known as Set. After murdering her father, step-mother, and infant step-brother, who became the new heir to the throne, she attempted to complete a ritual that would allow Set to take possession of a living human. But she was stopped before she could do so, mummified alive, and buried in what is now Iraq. In the present day, Sergeant Nick Morton and Corporal Vail of the U.S. Army go AWOL when the former intercepts a letter and map indicating possible treasure buried beneath a small village. When the two of them get caught up in a skirmish against insurgents, an enormous tomb is uncovered in the battle. Though reprimanded for their actions by Colonel Greenway, when Jennifer Halsey, the archeologist whom Nick stole the map from, arrives, Greenway orders both him and Vail to join her in investigating the tomb. In a large, man-made cavern connected to the antechamber, they discover a sarcophagus held down in a pool of mercury. Once he lays eyes on it, Nick sees a vision of Ahmanet telling him he's freed her, and refers to him as, "My chosen." With Greenway's help, the sarcophagus is lifted out of the tomb and loaded onto a plane, where it's transported to England. En route, Vail, who was bitten by a camel spider in the tomb, falls ill and then seemingly goes mad, killing Greenway and forcing Nick to shoot him. The plane is attacked by an enormous swarm of crows and crashes, with Jennifer the only survivor thanks to Nick's intervention. Nick, however, returns to life in a morgue, while at the wreckage site in Surrey, Ahmanet's reanimated mummy escapes her sarcophagus and begins feeding on people's life-force to restore herself; in doing so, she turns them into her undead servants. Nick is visited by Vail's spirit, telling him he's been marked Ahmanet, and he soon learns that she intends to finish what she started thousands of years ago by using him as Set's mortal vessel, stabbing him with a mystical dagger that was buried in England by the Crusader Knights.

Len Wiseman

Around the time of Tomb of the Dragon Emperor's release, Maria Bello seemed fairly confident that there would be a fourth film in that particular series, and it does appear that one was planned, set in South America and with Antonio Banderas as the villain. But in 2012, Universal decided to reboot the series, with Prometheus-writer Jon Spaihts behind the screenplay and Underworld-director Len Wiseman at the helm. Wiseman, however, left the project nearly a year afterward to work on the Fox television series, Sleepy Hollow, and he was replaced by Andy Muschietti, who was best known for 2013's Mama at the time, and would go on to do the two It feature films. His time on the project was shorter than Wiseman's, and around this time, Universal got the idea for the Dark Universe, prompting them to hire the film's producer, and eventual director, Alex Kurtzman, to oversee it, along with Chris Morgan. Kurtzman and his frequent producer, Robert Orci, who ultimately left the project in 2014, also aided Spaihts in rewriting the script, and then, Jenny Lumet was brought in for further rewrites; most significantly, she came up with the idea of making the title character a woman. But things changed even more drastically when Tom Cruise was hired to star, with several additional writers brought in to tailor the movie more to him; in the end, these newer writers were given screenplay credit, while the earlier ones were saddled with mere "story" credit. And this was far from the only influence Cruise had over the movie, as we'll get into.

The man who ultimately "directed" The Mummy, at least in the ceremonial sense, was Alex Kurtzman. Kurtzman is mainly a screenwriter, having co-written, along with Robert Orci, a number of movies for Michael Bay and J.J. Abrams, like The Island, the first two Transformers movies, and the first two rebooted Star Trek movies; he's also been involved with the screenplays for Mission: Impossible III, Watchmen, Cowboys & Aliens, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the latter two he was also a producer on. As far as directing goes, his only previous feature film was 2012's People Like Us; otherwise, he'd mostly worked in television, directing episodes of Alias, Fringe, Hawaii Five-0, and the aforementioned Sleepy Hollow. It seems like he was promoted to director on The Mummy because he'd been involved with the project get-go, was one of the only ones who stuck with it during its tricky pre-production, and had already been hired to oversee the Dark Universe, anyway. However, by all accounts, Tom Cruise was really the one in charge during filming, especially when it came to the movie's larger scale aspects, which Kurtzman had no experience with, direction-wise. Later, in 2019, while he was promoting the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, Kurtzman revealed that making The Mummy wasn't a happy experience, saying, "[It] wasn't what I wanted it to be... I look back on it now [and] what felt painful at the time ended up being an incredible blessing for me. I learned that I need to follow my own instincts, and when I can't fully do that, I don't think I can succeed."

I may have mentioned this in a list I did years ago about people in the entertainment world I personally don't care for (I need to amend that list, as there are some I left out, and others I feel I kind of unfairly attacked), but I am not a fan of Tom Cruise. There are only a small handful of his movies I've either watched or own, and none of them are because of him. I won't lie, a big reason for that is his rabid support of Scientology, which I dislike more and more every time I learn something new about it (also, as someone who benefited greatly from psychiatry, him calling it a pseudoscience personally offends me). I also feel that he has a massive ego and is rather narcissistic, something you can say about a lot of big-time actors and directors, but I feel he does it to the tenth power in how he basically has 100% control over all of his movies nowadays. Case in point, The Mummy, where he was the one in command, by all accounts. Some would argue that the movie benefited from Cruise's control, given Alex Kurtzman's inexperience with big-budget spectacle, but the fact that Cruise demanded control in his contract and new screenwriters were brought to better tailor it to him, while pushing the title character farther into the background, is an example of the egomania that makes me dislike him. It also doesn't help that the character he plays, Nick Morton, is the same type of cocky but "charming" action hero he's usually known for playing. Nick is also an asshole who forces his supposed friend, Corporal Vail, to joining him in heading down to a village of insurgents by cutting open his canteen, and is later revealed to have stolen the letter and map to the village from Jennifer Halsey while bedding her in Baghdad. He's so full of himself that he's downright offended when she accuses him of mimicking human intimacy for only fifteen seconds, and also takes credit for unearthing Ahmanet's tomb, which only happened because he and Vail were pinned down by enemy fire and Vail ordered an emergency airstrike. Also, the whole time they're down in the tomb, Nick is attempting to steal valuable antiquities in order to sell them on the black market, which was his reason for stealing the map and heading to the village in the first place. And he's the one who releases Ahmanet when he shoots loose the rope attached to the chains holding her sarcophagus in the pool of mercury, again for his own selfish gain.

During the sequence on the plane transporting the sarcophagus, they attempt to make Nick more likable by having him contemplate the fact that he nearly stole Jennifer's life's work out from under from her, and also by saving her when it's crashing by giving her a parachute and deploying it (he later admits he thought there was another one). After seemingly dying in the crash, only to reawaken in a morgue, Nick tries to figure out what's going on with him, as he keeps having visions of Ahmanet,

which began when he first saw the sarcophagus, as well as the deceased Vail's spirit, warning him that he's been cursed and can't escape her. Initially, he thinks he's hallucinating because of the mercury fumes, but as he has more bizarre and disturbing visions, he begins to believe there is something supernatural going on. Hoping to prove it to Jennifer, he has her accompany him to the crash site, ostensibly to see if Ahmanet's body is still in the sarcophagus (which he knows isn't the case).

But instead, he's drawn to Waverley Abbey near the site, where Ahmanet is waiting for him. She attempts to stab him with the Dagger of Set, completing the ritual she attempted thousands of years ago, but finds the dagger is incomplete. This gives Nick the chance to escape (almost without Jennifer), but he finds Ahmanet is in his head, manipulating him, as he ends up driving right back to her. Fortunately for him and Jennifer, the organization she works for, Prodigium, arrive and capture Ahmanet, and take them back to their

headquarters in London. There, he meets the leader, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and learns of the organization's goal of hunting down and destroying evil. He also finds himself tempted by Ahmanet, who promises him the power of a god if he allows her to perform the ritual on him, as well as horrified by their method of embalming her with sub-zero mercury. Torn by this, and wondering if he truly is a good person, as Jennifer assures him, Nick learns that Jekyll's plan for him is to let Set possess him and then kill him, hoping it will destroy Set himself in the process. As if that weren't enough, Nick then has to deal with Jekyll's evil side, who takes control and has plans of his own for Nick. During their fight, Nick is able to inject Hyde with a serum, reverting him to Jekyll, and allowing him and Jennifer to escape.

During the climax in the London Underground, Jennifer is killed by Ahmanet, much to Nick's distress, but he finds he has no chance in fighting her physically. Thus, he feigns giving in to her, only to steal the dagger away and attempt to destroy the ruby in its handle that makes it work. But Ahmanet tries to make him concede by reminding him that, if he allows Set to take possession of him, he'll be able to have godlike powers, which include control of life and death;

this backfires on her, as he stabs himself, and though Set enters his body, Nick is able to regain control. He then kills Ahmanet by sapping her own life-force and, after becoming frantic when he can't seem to make it work, manages to bring Jennifer back to life, intending to atone for all of the bad calls and mistakes he's made. He makes her stay away from him, not sure if he can keep control himself, and, knowing that Prodigium will be coming for him, escapes. He resurrects Vail and the

two of them head to Egypt, where Nick hopes to find a way to lift the curse, while the question remains of whether he will use his powers for good or evil. We're never going to know, as this led to nothing, and I don't care either.

I also don't at all care about the relationship between Nick and Jennifer, or Jenny, Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), as it doesn't feel sincere or organic whatsoever. During the first act, Jennifer despises Nick for bedding her in Baghdad, which he used as an excuse to steal the letter and map, and nearly making off with what she considers her life's work, as well as for his generally selfish, egotistical personality. This changes when, during the plane crash sequence, Nick gives her the only parachute and deploys it, saving her life. This shifts her opinion of him, and she's quite devastated by his apparent death, only to be shocked when he turns out to be alive. As an agent of Prodigium, she begins to believe this has something to do with Ahmanet, whose monstrous history and evil nature she's more than aware of. After contacting Dr. Jekyll, she's told to bring Nick to London, and attempts to coax him into it, suggesting he could be hallucinating due to a concussion and exposure to mercury. Instead, Nick decides to prove to it's real by going to the crash site. There, both he and Jennifer find the resurrected Ahmanet, her undead minions, and thwart her attempt to make Nick into Set's earthly vessel. At Prodigium headquarters in London, Jennifer grows more and more concerned about Ahmanet's influence on Nick. She also admits that she's grown to care about him and is convinced that, deep down, he is a good person, which he himself isn't so sure about. Ergo, she's not at all fine with Jekyll's plan to allow Set to possess Nick and kill him in order to destroy the evil deity. In the end, the two of them are forced to escape from Prodigium when Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde and when Ahmanet manages to escape capture. They end up down in the London Underground, where Jennifer is eventually killed by Ahmanet, but Nick, in allowing Set to possess him, uses his power to bring her back to life. Feeling guilty about his having done this for her sake, Jennifer still has enough faith in his goodness to believe he won't hurt her. However, he flees in order to avoid capture before they can see for sure. Nevertheless, she remains steadfast in her confidence in him.

Like I said, what makes Nick unlikable from the get-go is the way he forces his supposed friend, Corporal Vail (Jack Johnson), into joining him in heading down to the village, despite it being filled with insurgents. Vail tries to talk him out of it, especially since they're miles away from where they're supposed to be on recon, and when he refuses to join him, Nick slashes open his canteen, giving him no choice, since they're in the middle of nowhere. Next thing Vail knows, he's caught up in a fierce firefight with the insurgents, and they only survive because he calls in an airstrike, which also lets their superiors know where they are. After being chewed out, along with Nick, by Colonel Greenway, Vail is forced to join Nick and Jennifer Halsey in investigating the tomb uncovered by the airstrike. As they explore it and find some genuine valuables, Vail begins to think Nick's instincts were right, despite finding the place to be a bit ominous. But after Nick releases the pulley holding Ahmanet's sarcophagus down in the pool of mercury, they get swarmed by camel spiders, one of which bites Vail on the back of the neck. That tears it for him, as he declares he's leaving, with or without them. They then promptly lift the sarcophagus out of the tomb and begin transporting it out of the country. En route, Vail becomes increasingly sick from the bite, then appears to go mad and kills Greenway, before threatening the others. Nick is forced to kill him, but after the crash, he's visited by Vail's spirit in the morgue, telling him they need to talk and warning him that something bad is about to happen.

That's where I find myself flipping this movie the bird, as it actually has the balls to rip off An American Werewolf in London in terms of Jack returning from the dead to warn David. And they don't just rip off the basic concept, they go for the details: Vail looks decayed (he doesn't get worse over the course of the movie, though, and his look is hardly inspired or memorable), he has "comical" banter with Nick (honestly, it's more annoying than funny), as well as warns him, and tells him that they're both cursed and only Nick can break it by doing something drastic. In this case, Nick has to go along with Ahmanet's plan or, as Vail says, "This is gonna get a lot worse for both of us." I don't know how exactly this is going to affect Vail, or why he's even still cursed along with Nick, since Nick's the one who Ahmanet wants, but he's so determined to be free of it that he lures Nick down into the London Underground so Ahmanet can get at him. But even though this also leads to Jennifer's death, when Nick receives Set's powers, he brings Vail back to life and the two of them end the movie by heading into Egypt to try to find a cure for Nick's curse.

I'll be honest, I was interested in the idea of Russell Crowe not only being the head of this monster-hunting organization but also in playing Dr. Jekyll. Sure enough, he is one of the better parts of the movie, doing what he can with this lackluster script, and making Jekyll somewhat interesting, as a man who's been hunting ancient evil for a long time, while also trying to keep his own evil contained. As for how Mr. Hyde came about in this universe, we only get a veiled explanation where Jekyll talks about himself in the third person as, "A patient of mine. A man with promise. A man who believed he was beyond reproach, until he got ill. The disease manifested itself in subtle ways, at first, and then it grew into an overwhelming desire, an unquenchable thirst for chaos and the suffering of others." He tells Nick this while injecting himself with a serum that keeps Hyde, who begins to come through as he talks, under control. He adds, "He was quite fortunate. He himself was a physician, and if evil were a pathogen, he reasoned, then there must surely be a cure." (Obviously, this would've been elaborated on in a future movie.) Jekyll acts quite polite and courteous towards Nick when he's first brought to Prodigium headquarters, showing him where Ahmanet is being held, revealing that Jennifer works for them, and that their goal is to research and destroy evil monsters. But he also proves to have been deceitful towards Jennifer, as he plans to dissect Ahmanet after embalming her, rather than study her while she's still alive, as Jennifer thought. Moreover, while he hints at being able to rid Nick of the curse, he actually intends to have Set possess him and kill him in order to destroy Set as well. He sees this as what the Ancient Egyptians should've done rather than interrupt the ritual, and that Nick, in essence, killed himself the moment he severed the chain that kept Ahmanet's sarcophagus secured in the mercury. He's rather chipper and matter-of-fact when telling Nick this, and tries to soften the blow by telling him that he could save millions by sacrificing himself. In the end, when Nick is possessed by Set and escapes, Jekyll is unsure he won't use his power for evil, but does suggest that Jennifer could be right about her faith in him.

On the flip side, I'm disappointed in Crowe's Mr. Hyde, but not in terms of his performance. We get a hint of Hyde in the scene where Jekyll first speaks with Nick, while injecting himself with the serum that keeps him at bay; Jekyll's face becomes slightly warped and his voice turns into a growling Cockney accent, before the serum takes effect. Jekyll also always wears a black glove on his left hand, the spot where he injects himself and which we can see is seemingly deformed when he pulls the glove back to do so, suggesting it may be permanently corrupted by Hyde's evil. When Jekyll reveals his plan to sacrifice Nick for the greater good, Nick, freaked out by this, takes his injector from him in an attempt to force him to give up on that plan. Naturally, this allows Hyde to come through completely, even when Nick gives him back the injector, and Crowe gets to be more unhinged and violent, as well as darkly humorous. As he and Nick fight, Hyde, who laughs off Nick's futile attacks on him, proposes that the two of them become partners after Nick allows Set to possess him, adding, "Think about it. Mayhem, chaos, destruction. The ladies will love us." Nick, naturally, keeps resisting, and Hyde digs his fingers into the bones in his back, commenting, as Nick screams in agony, "I do enjoy the countenance of pain." It's only in his managing to get a hold of the injector and jab it into Hyde that Nick survives this fight, and even when Hyde reverts to Jekyll, Nick throws him across his desk before escaping with Jennifer.

My disappointment with Hyde is in the physical depiction, as they got lazy with it. Apart from the accent, major physical strength, combat prowess, and sadistic personality, the only noteworthy difference between him and Jekyll is how his skin becomes nastier-looking and his eyes, which have dark circles around them, glow an inhuman color. Also, the fingers on his right hand become longer and bonier, with ugly fingernails, and the palm-print becomes different enough to where the

scanner to Jekyll's office door won't let him out. These changes are all realized through digital effects rather than makeup and prosthetics, and they're not impressive whatsoever (though, I wonder if they were leery of forcing Crowe through the makeup process, given his reputation for volatility; I know he put on some noteworthy makeup in both The Insider and A Beautiful Mind, but those were fairly simple, compared to what Mr. Hyde usually entails).

In her creation of the title character, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), screenwriter Jenny Lumet talked about how she didn't want her to be evil for the sake of it or, "Pining away for some lost love,"; for my money, she didn't succeed on either score. Ahmanet is little more than a gender-flipped version of Imhotep, with a ruthless and monstrous backstory akin to that of the Dragon Emperor. Like both of them, she desired something, went to extreme and unholy measures to obtain it, and paid for it by being cursed and buried for thousands of years, until she's unwittingly unleashed. In this case, she coveted her Pharaoh father's kingdom, vowed revenge when he and his new wife had a son, knocking her out of line for the throne, and embraced the powers of darkness to make it so. Like the Dragon Emperor, Ahmanet was already a supernaturally powerful being before she was mummified alive, as she made a pact with Set, who gave her his dagger and she went through a transformation where ancient writing was branded along her arms and down her back, and her eyes split into double-irises. She then murdered all those who stood in her way (her father, step-mother, and baby step-brother), and attempted to complete the pact with Set by stabbing a man with the dagger, allowing the deity to possess his body so the two of them could wipe out mankind. She was stopped, the man killed, and she was mummified alive and buried in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, while the dagger found its way to England in the 12th century A.D., thanks to the Crusader Knights. Like both of her immediate cinematic predecessors, Ahmanet is revived thousands of years later and picks up where she leaves off. She even proves to have similar powers to Imhotep, as she feeds on the life-force of others to regenerate her mummified, decayed body, and can create powerful sandstorms and other such forces. And like both of them, she has undead servants; in this case, those whose life-force she absorbs, as well as the corpses of the Crusader Knights.

Even though Lumet didn't wish for Ahmanet's motivation to be a lost love, i.e. what Anck-su-namun was to Imhotep, the way she refers to Nick as, "My chosen," and attempts to seduce him, promising the power of a god and immortality, comes off as such. Now, granted, this could very well be her way of manipulating him to get what she wants, as she fills his head with imagery depicting her in a more sympathetic light than in Dr. Jekyll's recitation of her backstory at the

beginning of the movie, but her so desperately wanting Set to possess Nick, and the way she looks at him when he and Jennifer escape Prodigium headquarters during the third act, does come off as pining for Set, if no one else. And as for Lumet's other wish, that Ahmanet not be evil for evil's sake, it's kind of hard not to feel that way about her when we know what she did because she coveted her father's throne, tries to manipulate Nick to get what she wants, uses her power to take control of others, both living and dead, for the same ends, flat-out tells Jennifer that she will kill her at Prodigium, and wants to unleash Set so the two of them can basically rule the world.

Those who Ahmanet corrupts by feeding on their life-force basically become zombies: badly-decayed, walking corpses who do her every bidding, and while they're quite fragile, they're hard to put down due to their undead nature, allowing them to continue attacking even if they're beheaded. Also, while they initially seem to be of the classic slow-moving persuasion, they can run very fast and are quite agile while attacking when they need to, as seen when Nick and Jennifer are attacked while escaping Waverley Abbey. Ahmanet is also able to raise the Crusader Knights from their coffins and they serve virtually the same function, and she's able to easily dispense with them when they've served their purpose by turning them into dust.

Besides making people her slaves by absorbing their life-force, Ahmanet is also able to influence them through the use of arachnids. When her sarcophagus rises out of the mercury in her tomb, Nick, Jennifer, and Vail are swarmed by hundreds of camel spiders, one of which bites Vail on the back of his neck. Although camel spiders are normally not venomous, Vail becomes more and more sick-looking during the flight to the cargo plane and during the transport flight. His skin

becomes progressively pale, he's in visible pain from the bite-mark, often grabbing at it, and seems to experiencing a kind of fever, as he acts as though he's cold. Ultimately, his eyes roll up in the back of his head and, next thing anyone knows, he's cutting the sarcophagus' straps, fatally stabs Colonel Greenway, and tries to attack the others. He remains cursed by Ahmanet even in death, and actively tries to guide Nick and Jennifer into her hands so the ritual will be completed and the curse

lifted. Ahmanet does the same to a Prodigium technician, summoning a little black spider that crawls up the guy's clothes and goes into his ear. She then uses him to release her from her containment and stop them from pumping mercury into her. (Incidentally, the significance of the mercury is that, according to Jennifer, the Ancient Egyptians believed it could be used to combat evil; when Ahmanet has been captured by Prodigium, they inject her with subzero-level mercury in order to keep her weak enough to be shackled and to

embalm her.) Initially, crows act as both a sign of her presence, as they gather at the tomb and follow the sarcophagus when it's removed, and minions all their own, as a massive swarm of them down the plane transporting her. Speaking of Nick, Ahmanet is not only able to put images in her head but also make him think he's somewhere other than he really is. Her influence is so great that, when he and Jennifer encounter her in Surrey, he drives all the way back to her without even realizing it. And, in the biggest ripoff of the previous Mummy movies, she's able to summon a powerful sandstorm, which happens to have a face in it. The only difference is she's able to conjure it up in the middle of London.

I will admit that Ahmanet's design is memorable, in that she retains the classic Mummy look of being almost completely swathed in bandages, save for her head and neck, much of her arms and hands, and feet, while also being deathly pale in color, with the ancient symbols tattooed on her, jet-black hair, and ugly, cracked, diseased-looking fingernails. Her most distinguishing feature is her eyes, with their double-irises, akin to an actual medical condition. While she never completely

regenerates into her beautiful human form, like Imhotep, she does start off as very decayed and shriveled, but becomes more and more human-like as she feeds on people's life-forces, and also becomes increasingly powerful. Her initial regeneration, when she feeds on a pair of Surrey police officers, is much more horrific than Imhotep's, as her body hideously twists and contorts, while she let's out some ungodly sounds. She's not even able to walk upright until she's fairly well regenerated; before then, she can only crawl

on all fours in a rather unsettling, herky-jerky manner, and her voice is much raspier. And speaking of her voice, during the second act, she reveals that she's learned to speak English, saying it's not that complicated to pick up on.

Given the number of people who worked on the script, it shouldn't be surprising that The Mummy is quite weak in terms of its story and characters, but even so, it's disconcerting how much it not only feels derivative of other movies but, ultimately, is just so "okay" that it might as well not exist. As I've already described, the story feels like a xerox of the basic plots of the Brendan Fraser movies: we get the villain's backstory told to us and see how they were cursed and sealed away in some manner, they're then resurrected thousands of years later,

prove to have great powers which involve curses and control of the elements, making them a real challenge for the heroes, and could potentially destroy the world once they've totally regenerated and regained their power. The characters are also uninspired, with Nick being a selfish soldier of fortune who suddenly has a change of heart after he realizes he's Ahmanet's pawn, Jennifer little more than a woefully underdeveloped love interest for him, Vail often being more annoying than funny, including when he's undead, and Ahmanet,

despite an interesting physical design, having little that distinguishes her from both Imhotep and the Dragon Emperor. And while Dr. Jekyll is certainly interesting, I think that has more to do with Russell Crowe's charisma, as the character really has little noteworthy to do, and comes out the worst since he never got a movie of his own that would've allowed for some expansion. Speaking of which, the concept of Prodigium, this organization that researches and destroys ancient evil in the form of

monsters, despite being an obvious parallel to S.H.I.E.L.D. (I was going to say Monarch from the MonsterVerse, for obvious reasons, but that concept wouldn't be fully realized until Godzilla: King of the Monsters, two years later), had some promise but here, it feels tacked on and nothing more than a tease for the other movies planned in the Dark Universe.

I will say that, while everything concerning Prodigium contributes nothing to the plot in the long run, the attempt to build up the Dark Universe here is not as intrusive as I expected it to be. It's hinted at right from the very beginning, with Prodigium taking control of the Crusader Knights tomb found beneath London, and Dr. Jekyll's statement that he's managed to unearth many "ancient mysteries" throughout his life, but when it comes to the forefront during the second act, at its headquarters, it's mainly just there as background,

with the suggestion of there being many other monsters out there not dwelt upon to the point of distraction. But still, while I'm all for the classic Universal monsters to have a modern resurgence, it's a shame the studio not only just saw them as a way to compete with Marvel, but slapped together this concept in such a haphazard way. They announced a number of different movies and potential stars before The Mummy was even released, like Bride of Frankenstein, with Javier Bardem as the Monster and Angelina Jolie as the

Bride, and The Invisible Man with Johnny Depp, as well as others, like a reboot of Van Helsing. They even both tried to generate audience interest and appear confident in their plans when they posted that photo of Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Bardem, Depp, and Sofia Boutella standing around on the official Dark Universe Twitter account, only for it to be later revealed as an edited image, with all of the actors put in separately. In a 2021 interview with IndieWire, screenwriter Eric Heisserer talked

about how, when he was hired to develop the new Van Helsing with Jon Spaihts, he saw how poorly set up the Dark Universe was when he was involved in the first big planning stage: "There was certainly a big brain trust of writers around the table. You had a lot of voices and none of them could agree on much. Much like when I’d visit my relatives for Thanksgiving and everyone’s arguing with each other…You had some people saying, ‘Should our monsters all be villains in these movies or can they all be heroes?’ And someone else would say, ‘We can build the plane when we fly it.’ And it’s me and Jon Spaihts at the table going, ‘That’s a terrible analogy. We don’t want to be on that plane. What are we doing here?’" I don't doubt that, if The Mummy had done well, they would've proceeded with at least one of those other planned movies, but when it flopped the way it did, Universal wisely decided to stop chasing trends and begin revamping their classic horror films in more successful, low-key ways (as we'll see tomorrow).

Now, while the attempted construction of the Dark Universe itself isn't that intrusive, the references to past horror films that dot the movie range from interesting to eye-rolling and just plain aggravating. As you saw up above, there's a glimpse of the Gill-Man's hand at Prodigium headquarters, which I thought was kind of cool (then again, I love the Gill-Man so much in general that I always welcome any reference to him), and I thought the same thing about a reference to the original Mummy that you see right when the film

starts. After the Dark Universe logo, there's a title card that claims to be an Egyptian prayer for resurrection, but it's actually a bit of the writing from the Scroll of Thoth in that film, specifically the prayer that brings Imhotep back to life. While examining the tomb, Jennifer notes how there are no expected provisions for the deceased's journey into the afterlife, akin to the lack of sacred spells on Imhotep's coffin in both the original 1932 film and the first Stephen Sommers film. That was one

of the things that made me think, "Been there, done that." At one point, Dr. Jekyll offers Nick a familiar toast: "Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters." That's the one I found to be kind of eye-rolling, especially since this movie can't even hope to reach the heights of the one it comes from. But the references I absolutely hated were the blatant ripping off of An American Werewolf in London I mentioned, and how this movie copies so much from the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies. You even see the Book of Amun-Ra, which Jennifer uses to knock someone out during the action sequence at Prodigium headquarters, making me wonder if those movies are actually canon in this universe (though, in all likelihood, it was probably just a cheeky reference, which kind of makes it worse).

Tonally, the movie attempts to return The Mummy to its horror roots, eschewing the campy, tongue in cheek feel of the previous movies, and it does a decent job of coming across as much darker... which is why the attempts at humor they do go for don't mesh. You have the banter between Nick and Vail, both before and after the latter dies, which is never really that funny or clever, and later comes off as just irritating, and there's also an attempt at humor with how polite yet matter-of-fact Jekyll is when it comes to causing Ahmanet pain from the

mercury and Nick's objection to his plan for him, which is kind of funny but not as much as they seem to think. But the worst instances of comedy are those made at Nick's expense, like when he accidentally shoots the cursed Vail a third time and when he awakens naked in the morgue and has to cover his naughty bits when Jennifer walks in with a couple of doctors (him waking up and frantically ripping open the body-bag he's zipped up in comes off as funny as well, though I don't know if it was

intentional). After Ahmanet first attempts to stab Nick with the dagger (the lead-up of which had her grabbing and licking his midsection to the point where it kind of tickles him), Jennifer walks in on the awkward-looking sight of Ahmanet straddling him, with zombies standing all around them. They all turn their heads and look right at her at the same time, with both Jennifer and Ahmanet acting like Nick has been caught cheating on the former; Nick's the one who has to snap Jennifer out of her

stupor. And there's a moment where Nick storms up to Ahmanet, wielding a section of tree branch like he's gonna whoop her ass, and the music builds to a fever pitch and Jennifer cheers him on... only for him to get knocked straight up into the air and land flat on his face.

All my complaints aside, I do have to concede that the film has a handful of memorable action sequences and setpieces. The most impressive is the one aboard the cargo plane, when it's losing control after the swarm of crows slam into it. That was an instance where they shot aboard a reduced-gravity aircraft, "the Vomit Comet," to make it look as if the characters are weightless due to the loss of pressure and the steep incline in which the plane is going down, and it looks really good. By all accounts, Tom Cruise was the one who convinced

Alex Kurtzman to shoot it that way, so I have to give him credit; love him or hate him, he does know how to create true spectacle. Similarly, the action sequence in Iraq, which involves some great stunts and real explosions, is a nice one as well. And as derivative as it is, the sequence during the third act, when Ahmanet gets loose and unleashes her power upon London, is pretty spectacular and features some impressive stunts that were, I'm sure, performed by Cruise himself, for the most part.

Speaking of Cruise, those stunts, as well as other little moments here and there, like when, during his final confrontation with Ahmanet, he feigns giving in to her, only to tell her, "I'm sorry. We're just never gonna happen. And it's not me; it's you," are indicative of his undeniable chutzpah and do make me understand why so many people love him, despite what a controversial figure he may be.

The cinematography by Ben Seresin, a veteran of big-budget movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Unstoppable, and World War Z, is fine. I'll always prefer the lush, beautiful color palette of the Stephen Sommers Mummy movies, but this film does certainly look good, especially during Ahmanet's backstory, which is shot in a manner similar to those movies' prologues in Ancient Egypt, only with deeper contrasts and shadows, and the sequence set in Iraq early on, which was actually the Namib Desert. The dark look of

Ahmanet's tomb, with a light, blue-green color palette, is something of a prelude to the look the movie takes on when the setting switches to England, as it has that same sort of feel, especially in the nighttime exteriors set in the countryside and the climax set deep within the London Underground. The scene where Nick and Jennifer encounter Ahmanet out in the woods in the early morning hours is eerily foggy, with Ahmanet appearing as a creepy dark figure in the mist,

slowly walking towards them. Also, while not as overt as in the Sommers movies, there are a fair number of beauty shots of the Namib Desert's landscape, the English countryside, and the streets of London, both in high, bird's eye shots when Nick is first brought to Prodigium headquarters, and down on the streets when all hell breaks loose during the climax.

It's almost become a cliche at this point, but regardless, Ahmanet's influence over Nick is often visually realized in visions he has of her, the Egyptian desert, and flashbacks to the evil acts she committed back in Ancient Egypt, with Nick often finding himself in the visions. These visions range from the sensual and seductive, like when Nick sees himself being approached by Ahmanet in the desert and her lying atop him in bed, to the surreal and horrific, like when he imagines himself being approached by her initial, decayed form and

attacked by swarms of rats in an alleyway. Sometimes, when he's seeing these things, he's moved from one place to another without realizing it, as he stumbles right in front of a car while imagining the rats, and sees Ahmanet beckoning him to an old chapel near Waverley Abbey, only to then find himself inside the chapel. And in one vision, he sees Jennifer and Dr. Jekyll nearby when the former calls to him trying to break Ahmanet's influence.

The Namib Desert was likely where both the section in Iraq and pieces of Ahmanet's backstory, as well as the visions between her and Nick out in the sand, were filmed. Most of the backstory plays out on interior sets, save for an initial scene where the Pharaoh watches Ahmanet spar with someone on a sand-dune from a shaded exterior throne-room, a shot of them looking at the horizon, with the pyramids in the background (this is where Nick and Vail head at the end of the movie), and when she's buried following her mummification. The sets

here are not even close to the scale of the previous movies' prologues, with very small rooms and chambers, like the draped one where the Pharaoh's wife gives birth, their bed chambers, and most notably, a dim, ceremonial chamber, lit by torchieres and full of crows that are hung upside from the ceiling, which is where Ahmanet makes her pact with Set, as well as a similar one where she tries to complete said pact. The Mesopotamian chamber where she's buried is accessed only by an

enormous hole in the ground, which a small village was built over, and it remains uncovered until Corporal Vail's ordered airstrike hits it. Nick, Jennifer, and Vail repel down through the hole, past a large carving of Ahmanet's face, and into an enormous antechamber, filled with large statues, Egyptian inscriptions on the wall across from where they come down, and mercury dripping from the ceiling and collecting into a small canal system.

The canal system runs to the actual burial chamber, pooling into a well at the center of several more statues, which is where Ahmanet's sarcophagus is held down by a pulley system that Nick cuts. They also find the remains of several High Priests of Amun, with bits of jewelry attached to them, and barrier chain around the well that, according to Jennifer, acts as a warning to intruders.

Once the film reaches England in the latter part of the first act, much of the action during this section is set in the countryside, save for when Nick awakens in the morgue, when he's visited by Vail's spirit when he and Jennifer are at a bar, when he has some disturbing visions in an alleyway outside, and when he nearly wanders into the street. Specifically, Waverley Abbey in Surrey is right next to the cargo plane's crash-site, with Ahmanet claiming her first victims in a nearby bog, and the abbey's ruins are where Nick and Jennifer first run

into her, as well as where the Dagger of Set is hidden in a small statue. Winterfold Forest, also in Surrey, serves as the location for the action scene following Nick and Jennifer's escape from the abbey, as well as where Ahmanet is captured and taken to Prodigium headquarters. Speaking of which, Prodigium seems to be hidden beneath the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, as Nick and Jennifer find their way into it

when they escape. Aside from said headquarters, the most noteworthy setting in London is the Crusader Knight Burial Chamber, discovered within the subway system, which serves as the setting for the climax, as do the subway tunnels and a long, underwater tunnel, flooded by the Thames, that connects to the chamber. The chamber itself is a pretty impressive set, with its enormous size, ancient architecture, big pillars, and stone coffins containing the knights' bodies, whom Ahmanet resurrects to do her bidding; the underwater tunnel connecting to the chamber also houses some coffins, and those particular knights are resurrected and pursue Nick while he's trying to save Jennifer.

The sets for the Underground and Prodigium headquarters were shot between Pinewood and Shepperton Studios, and the latter is definitely the most noteworthy setting, although it's not the most interesting in terms of production design. When Nick is first brought to it, he's driven underground, escorted through a tunnel and a room full of bizarre specimens (such as the Gill-Man hand), before entering Dr. Jekyll's office through a side-door. Said office is a very large room, with a desk in front of an enormous window, another door in a

metal part of the room across from the desk, which is activated with a palm-scanner, and behind an examination chair akin to what you see in a dentist's office. The office also contains glass cases filled with bizarre-looking weapons and specimens such as skulls with long fangs, contorted bone structures, and the like. Adjoining the office is a large library behind some automatic glass doors, which is where, among other things, the Book of Amun-Ra is found. The centerpiece of the base is a

big chamber where Ahmanet is shackled to a grated, circular section of the floor, while mercury is pumped into her, with technicians off to the sides keeping track of the process and monitoring her. There's a large, circular stairway leading to a walkway that extends across the width and length of the room, and again, the place leads into the Natural History Museum up above. It is an interesting few sets, but the art direction is just kind of ho-hum (though Jekyll admits they didn't have much time to prepare).

When it comes to the special effects, while there is the expected over-reliance on CGI, there are some makeup effects as well, often used in conjunction with the digital effects. While I think both Vail's sickly look under Ahmanet's control and his undead design are full makeups, Ahmanet herself also seems to have been created mostly through makeup, but with some digital augmentation, like with her eyes and some rotted parts of her flesh in her early stages. Her first instance of regeneration after feeding also appears to be a mix of practical

and digital work, and like I said, it is effectively unsettling, as are the unnatural ways in which she moves, which appear to have been done for real. Her undead servants look really good when they're done through makeup and animatronics, and they sometimes look good when they're digital (close-ups of their faces after Ahmanet has feed on them have some digital effects added, but they look more realistic than Sir John Talbot's severed head in The WolfMan); other times, though, they do come off as pretty fake. At the beginning of the movie, a

hideous ghoul, perhaps Set himself, gives Ahmanet the mystical dagger when she first makes her pact, and he looks quite good as well. The effects of her draining their life-force certainly comes off better than the shot of Imhotep doing it back in The Mummy Returns, but it's still clearly CGI. And I really hate that they went the cheap route and used "digital makeups" for Mr. Hyde and when you see Nick possessed by Set at the end of the movie (again probably because they're big movie stars

and due to their temperaments, especially Russell Crowe). As for the fully digital effects, the augmenting of the sets and landscapes, chief among them when you see the pyramids of Giza in the background of some shots and when they descend down into Ahmanet's tomb, and the sandstorms, look really good. But, besides those I've already mentioned, others, like the completely digital animals, such as the camel spiders, the crows, and the rats which Nick imagines attacking him in one scene, don't come off as well (though

they are better than similar creatures in the earlier Mummy movies, and the spider that Ahmanet summons when she's in Prodigium actually looks pretty good). Finally, there are some not so good green-screen effects here and there, like during the chase scene in the forest.

Following the Dark Universe logo and the title card with the Egyptian resurrection prayer, the movie opens with a brief shot of England in the year 1127 A.D., with the Crusader Knights laying one of their own to rest, placing a red ruby in the stone coffin with him. It cuts to the present day, as a huge drill breaks through the wall of the burial chamber housing the Crusader Knights' coffins. After some news reports on the discovery, Dr. Jekyll and his team from Prodigium arrive at the site, with Jekyll

telling his chief of security, Malik, to clear out the construction workers. Once they're all gone, he finds a section of the wall in the back, with Egyptian hieroglyphics carved into it. He narrates, "The past... cannot remain buried forever. In my lifetime, I have unearthed many ancient mysteries. At last, this tomb reveals antiquity's darkest secret, a secret erased from history, and forgotten to time." It flashes back to Ancient Egypt, as Princess Ahmanet is introduced while proving her physical

prowess in a sparring exercise, as her father, the Pharaoh, watches. Jekyll narrates, "Princess Ahmanet: beautiful, cunning, and ruthless. Sole heir to the throne of Egypt. The Pharaoh's kingdom would one day be hers to rule, without mercy or fear. And Ahmanet would be worshiped as a living god." But then, after Ahmanet sees her father looking at his new wife, we cut to the birth of the Pharaoh's son, as Jekyll continues, "The boy now would inherit her destiny, and Ahmanet understood power was not given. It had to be taken. Vowing

revenge, she made the choice to embrace evil: Set, the god of death. They made a pact, a pact that would unleash darkness itself." In a ceremonial chamber, Ahmanet reads from a scroll and makes a blood pact with Set, who appears as a hideous ghoul and hands her his dagger. Despite some trepidation, she takes it from him, and is instantly transformed, with markings branding themselves across her body, and her irises dividing in two. Jekyll says, "Ahmanet was reborn... a monster," as she then uses the dagger to murder father, as well as his infant son (offscreen, mind you, but with some little splashes of blood).

Then, she's shown attempting to complete the pact by stabbing a man with the dagger. But as she's about to plunge it into him, she's shot with some darts, while the man is killed when he tries to fight back; upon dropping the dagger, it and its jewel are separated. Before she can reach for it, she's held down and, in the next cut, wrapped in bandages, placed in a sarcophagus, and sealed within. Jekyll narrates, "Her body... carried far from Egypt," as her sarcophagus is lowered into the tomb in

Mesopotamia. Jekyll concludes, "There she would remain, condemned to eternal darkness. But death is a doorway, and the past cannot remain buried forever." With that, the movie truly begins, in modern-day Iraq, as Sergeant Nick Morton and Corporal Vail are introduced while scouting out a village from atop a large hill. Though Vail thinks they're out of luck, since the place is filled with insurgents, Nick, unwilling to pass up possible treasure, is intent on going in. And when Vail is reluctant to join him, Nick forces his hand by cutting open his water supply. Nick comments, "Come on, Vail. Where's your sense of adventure?... Come on. Slip in, slip out, just like we always do."

And then, they're under fire from the insurgents, chased through a tight exterior corridor and forced into a house, all while Vail complains about how wrong Nick was about this supposedly being easy. They're forced up onto the roof, with Nick dropping a grenade down the stairs behind them, blowing away a bunch of their pursuers. They jump to avoid the explosion, and are then pinned behind the edge of the rooftop, with only a fairly short section of stone wall as cover. In a panic, Vail

uses his walkie-talkie to order an airstrike at their mark, much to Nick's frustration. An explosion knocks a bunch of stones down onto them, and they jump onto and run across a lower rooftop, avoiding more machine gunfire and explosives. They jump to another rooftop, this one with virtually no cover, and Nick looks over the edge to see that the street below is filled with insurgents. Getting down low and crawling across the roof, Vail yells at Nick that they're going to die because

of him, while Nick says he's trying to think. But when he looks over the opposite edge of the roof and sees more gunmen, he admits that they probably are going to die. At the moment, the airstrike comes, and two missiles hit the center of the village, blowing away much of it, killing a number of insurgents, and sending the rest fleeing off into the desert. As what happened dawns on them, they look over the edge of the roof, see the enormous crater the airstrike left behind, and Vail loudly and happily declares that he's still alive.

Then, the ground shakes and the section of the building they're standing on breaks loose and falls forward, sending them to the ground. And as soon as they hit, they're dragged towards a huge, deep hole where the shallow crater was. Vail is sucked down into it and, for a second, seemingly killed, but when Nick gets to his feet and walks to the edge of the hole, he looks down to see Vail resting on a mound beside a huge, carved stone face in the opening's wall. Nick takes it as a sign that he was right in coming to the village.

After they get chewed out by Colonel Greenway, and Jennifer Halsey arrives and slaps Nick in the face for his deception, the two of them, as well as Vail, repel down into the tomb when Jennifer sees that it's a significant discovery. Once they reach bottom, Nick and Vail are nearly smothered by a slight cave-in, and then, they discover mercury dripping from the ceiling. Jennifer finds that the mercury is dripping down into interconnected holes in the ground and that they lead to a large well,

filled with the liquid, in the back of the tomb. Turning on some powerful lights so they can see better, Jennifer records her findings and observations on a video camera, while Nick and Vail attempt to make off with the jewelry they find on the skeletal remains scattered about the chamber. Jennifer, seeing the chains leading down into the well from the ceiling, notes that they're holding something down, adding, "This is not a tomb; it's a prison." Greenway's voice then comes 

over Vail's walkie-talkie and tells them they need to get out now. Jennifer is reluctant to leave without finding out what's down in the mercury, and she and Vail argue about it. Nick, noticing the line connected to the chains' pulley system, shoots it with his handgun, lowering several enormous weights in the tomb's corners, while raising a creepy-looking sarcophagus from the mercury's depths. Suddenly, hundreds of camel spiders emerge from the walls and scuttle towards them. One of them bites Vail on the back of his neck, and

he panics to the point of opening fire on them with an assault rifle. Nick and Jennifer have to talk him down, but he doesn't become any calmer, as he angrily rants about being bitten and asks if they could please leave. Nick looks at the sarcophagus, and is hit with visions of the deserts of Egypt, of him standing out there, and being approached and seduced by Ahmanet, who calls him, "My chosen." Jennifer snaps him out of his daze, ordering him to tell Greenway to send down a team to remove the sarcophagus, or he'll have to explain why they left

her behind. She gets her wish, as the sarcophagus is airlifted out of the tomb, but in the midst of the operation, Nick notices crows gathering around the site. When the helicopter flies off with the sarcophagus, a number of them follow after it. During the flight to a large cargo plane, Vail is becoming sick, and a sandstorm is reported heading their way. Reaching the spot, the sarcophagus is lowered and loaded onto the plane, while the others disembark, get onboard, and strap in, as the sandstorm quickly approaches. Though it reaches them before they take off, they're able to fly off through it.

En route, Vail lies down on his seat and his eyes roll up in the back of his head. Meanwhile, Jennifer examines the sarcophagus, recording her translation of the hieroglyphics, which allude to Ahmanet, and Nick, as he looks at it, sees more visions. When Jennifer says Ahmanet's name out loud, he sees flashes of her pact with Set and her attempt to complete the pact, only with himself in place of the man she was going to stab with the dagger. Nick bolts awaken right when she brings

the dagger down, and sees that some time has passed, as Jennifer is now in her seat, working on her laptop. He looks over to the sarcophagus, to see Vail standing over it, lightly sawing at one of its straps with a knife. Colonel Greenway demands to know what he's doing, but Vail ignores him and continues cutting the strap. Aggravated, Greenway gets up and confronts Vail, only for him to suddenly stab him in the chest. Nick gets up and tries to talk Vail down, but he instead stabs

Greenway again, finishing him off. The colonel drops to the floor and everyone, seeing what's happened, gets to their feet. Two soldiers back there point their guns at Vail, who slowly approaches them. Nick stands between them, trying to talk them down, and then takes one of the soldier's guns, telling them to back off. Jennifer tells them not to shoot, as the plane is pressurized, when Vail lazily slashes at Nick, just missing his back. He corners them in the back of the cargo hold, wheezing, and doesn't respond when they tell

him to put down the knife. When he comes in at Jennifer, Nick shoots him, but he just recoils and comes back at them. With no choice, Nick shoots him again, this time putting him down for good. They look down at him, trying to process what happened, when Nick accidentally shoots him again out of reflex; he then gives the one soldier his gun back. Suddenly, the plane violently lists to one side, and Nick looks out the window to see that one of the propellers is smoking. He and Jennifer run to the cockpit, as the pilots call in a mayday.

They tell them they don't know what's happening and to take their seats, when something slams against the window, leaving a streak of blood and cracking the glass. Nick then sees a black mass heading for the plane, and when it gets close, he realizes it's a huge swarm of crows. They start slamming against the glass, as he and Jennifer retreat back into the cargo bay. The crows then smash through and enter the cockpit, killing the pilots instantly.

The plane flies through the crows and starts screeching towards the ground at top speed. The interior depressurizes and everyone becomes weightless, flying up against the ceiling. Nick gets himself and Jennifer over to the parachutes, and helps her put one on. The end of the left wing tears off, and they're flung to the floor, then the wing's second rotor explodes and a huge hole is torn into the plane's side. Vail's body is sucked out, and as the plane tilts and disintegrates further as it

continues heading towards the ground, Nick and Jennifer are flung near the hole. They roll across the ceiling, down the opposite wall, and back onto the floor, but as Nick tries to grab Jennifer's hand, they roll back to the wall next to the hole, while one of the soldiers falls out to his death. Again, the others are flung across the ceiling and to the opposite wall, when one of the left wing's rotors explodes and rips off a chunk of it. The plane literally spirals down towards the ground, and 

Nick and Jennifer are flung right next to the hole. Realizing he's going to lose his grip on her, Nick pulls the cord on her parachute and she's yanked out. Nick lays flat against the wall next to the hole, bracing himself and then yelling right before the plane hits and everything goes white. Following that, Nick awakens in a morgue, containing the bodies of the other victims. He rears up in a body-bag and frantically rips himself loose. Removing the bag from his body, he's shocked when he looks down and sees a toe-tag attached to him,

identifying him simply as "UNKNOWN." He gets another shock when he turns around and sees Vail standing behind him. He jumps off the table, knocking another one over, and Vail calmly tells him they need to talk. Nick then asks if he's dead, and Vail answers, "Dead? No, but you're gonna wish you were." That's when Jennifer walks, along with two doctors, one of whom is a woman, and Nick has to cover himself up, demanding to know what's happening and who's in charge.

Elsewhere, two police officers find part of the wreckage near a bog and go in to investigate. One of them finds a body, while another walks beneath a raised bit of walkway and finds the sarcophagus, opened and empty. He's startled by some crows, and then sees a trail of gauze leading across the mud, to where some more crows sit atop an overturned canoe. Looking beneath it, he sees a gnarled hand, and turns the canoe over to reveal Ahmanet's decayed corpse. Looking closely at it 

and illuminating it with his flashlight, the man yells for his partner, when Ahmanet rears up behind him and puts her hand through the back of his head and out his right eye-socket. Hearing a scream, the other officer goes looking for his partner, and comes across his desiccated, shriveled body. The sight of it causes him to back away in fear, and he trips and whacks his head against a plank. He slowly sits up, surrounded by crows flapping and cawing all around him, and attempts

to get over his daze. He turns to his right, and Ahmanet is immediately on him, sucking the life out of him just as she did his partner. Finishing her feeding, she drops him to the ground and crawls away, regenerating herself slightly as she goes. Crawling out from under the walkway, she intones, "Rise," and the two officers return to life as the undead. They shamble out from under the walkway to join Ahmanet, as she slowly gets to her feet and sees the actual crash site nearby, circled by a search helicopter. Back with Nick and Jennifer, at a bar,

Jennifer tells him of the Dagger of Set and that she's found evidence suggesting it was stolen by the Crusader Knights and hidden in Europe, with a piece of it buried with one of the knights in England. She also tells him of the recently uncovered tomb in London and of Ahmanet. The whole time they're talking, Nick sees Vail's spirit, trying to get his attention, and eventually excuses himself from the table. While he's gone, Jennifer calls Dr. Jekyll, who tells her to bring Nick to London and not to discuss the situation with him any further.

In the restroom, Nick argues with Vail, who appears in the mirror, and tells him that the two of them are cursed. At one moment, some women come through the door, making Nick realize he went into the wrong restroom, and he quickly shoos them out and closes the door. Vail tells him that he survived the crash because of the curse; he also mentions the word, "Setepa-i," and that he knows what it means. Nick walks out of the back of the restaurant and into an alleyway, attempting

to clear his head. He looks down the alleyway to his left, and is startled when Ahmanet's shriveled, gnarled corpse crawls along the ground, then gets up and shambles towards him. Nick tries to get back inside, but the door is locked. He then tries to escape through a gate next to the door, but finds a lock on it as well. Dozens and dozens of rats come with Ahmanet, and when Nick looks through the gate, hundreds more come at him. He's promptly swarmed, with them crawling all over him, and struggles until he falls to the ground, with Ahmanet

still approaching. She hovers over him and lunges down, saying, "Setepa-i,"... and then, the next thing Nick knows, Jennifer is dragging him out of the street before he gets hit by a car. Once he realizes what happened, he tries to make her realize that he agrees something supernatural is going on, but she's now chalking it all up to a concussion and exposure to the mercury. As he argues with her, he sees a vision of the crash-site and the sarcophagus. This makes him decide to go there and see if Ahmanet's inside it to prove the whole thing's not real (or so he says).

At the ruins of Waverley Abbey, Ahmanet has fed on more people, further regenerating herself. Nick and Jennifer arrive there, dropped off in a cow pasture, and Nick, instead of heading for the actual crash-site, walks towards the abbey. Once they're in the ruins, Jennifer becomes incredulous as to why, and separates from Nick to head for the crash-site. As Nick stands within the ruins, Ahmanet scuttles across a ledge behind him, but when he turns around, there's nothing there. He then turns

and looks across the way, towards an old church. The front door opens, revealing Ahmanet, who beckons him towards her. He has a vision of her as a human, saying, "Setepa-i," and suddenly, he's standing in the center of the chapel. Confused, he looks around and slowly backs away, not seeing Ahmanet stalking him from the shadows, but he does hear and sense a presence and calls for Jennifer. He stumbles and backs away towards the door, when he's grabbed by one of Ahmanet's

servants; at that moment, Jennifer realizes that Nick isn't following her. The zombies slam Nick atop a stone slab, holding his hands and feet in place, when Ahmanet leaps in and lands atop him. She examines him, first his head, face, and mouth, then pulls up his shirt and runs her fingers across his midsection, as well as grabs it in a manner that's ticklish. She nuzzles her face against his stomach, then slides up him and does so against his face, murmuring, "God of death, mighty Set, I welcome you into this mortal body." Sitting up, she

smashes a statue's head with a swing of her arm and removes the mystical dagger from within it. Nick panics at the sight of it but is unable to move, as Ahmanet prepares to stab him, saying, "Join me at last." She brings the dagger down, but stops the blade mere inches above his stomach, as she realizes the jewel which fits into its hilt is missing. That's when Jennifer walks in on the bizarre scene, and is so shocked by the sight of it that Nick has to snap her out of her stupor, telling her to run.

Ahmanet angrily stabs the dagger right next to Nick's head and jumps off the slab, rushing at Jennifer. Nick tries to free himself from the zombies' grasp, only to put his fist right through the head of the one who was holding down his right arm; he compensates by gripping the back of his head and slamming him down on the slab. Ahmanet grabs Jennifer, slams her against the wall, and grabs her throat. Jennifer gets a candlestick to her left and smacks Ahmanet in the head, but this

only angers her, and she flings Jennifer into one of the pews, smashing it to pieces. Nick manages to kick himself free of the zombies and leaps off the slab, while one dives across it at him and ends up impaled on a pillar across from him. Nick kicks another, getting his foot stuck in his torso, while another one grabs him from behind. He manages to grab the latter's head, rip it off, and smash it into the other's forehead, before stomping his head and smashing it to bits. Nick then knocks down the one

zombie's still moving, headless body, and grabs and slams another through a stained glass window, while Ahmanet picks up Jennifer, who's unconscious, and prepares to drain her life-force. Nick dives over the slab, grabs the dagger, and stabs Ahmanet in the back with it. He dodges a swing from her, while Jennifer removes the dagger and Nick knocks Ahmanet to the floor. The two of them rush out of the chapel and through the adjoining cemetery, when Nick runs in the opposite direction from Jennifer. She sees that he's heading

for an abandoned EMT van, and he almost drives off without her, but she manages to climb inside the passenger seat. They drive off down the dirt road and into the nearby forest, Nick saying he knows there's a highway up ahead. As they drive, Jennifer realizes the weapon she's holding is the Dagger of Set, and that Ahmanet called Nick there in order to stab him with it. Jennifer also tells Nick that Ahmanet is in his head, manipulating his every move, which he doesn't believe initially, but is then faced with proof when they find he unknowingly drove all the way back to the chapel. He puts the van in reverse, slams into a stone wall behind him, and again heads down the dirt road.

A zombie comes running at them and bursts through the passenger-side door, flailing at Nick. He grabs the zombie's hand and slams it against the dashboard. He then aims the van's left side towards a tree, slamming the zombie into it and taking off his lower half, but his torso continues attacking. Nick grabs the torso and throws him out the window on his side, but the zombie clings onto the door's exterior and keeps grabbing at him. He, again, aims for a tree and manages to knock the

torso off, but has to remove the still-gripping hand and throw it out. Another zombie smashes his head through their windshield from atop the van, managing to partially get inside. Nick grabs him and manages to shove him back out the windshield, but he grabs onto the hood and comes back at Nick, grabbing at him. Jennifer kicks at the zombie, but ends up kicking Nick in the head several times, before he flings the zombie over to her side. She kicks him, but the zombie grabs her

foot and almost pulls her out, forcing her to grab onto the seat-belt. Nick knocks the zombie off her, and she fastens her seat-belt again, only for the zombie to crawl back across the hood and lunge at Nick through the windshield. He grabs the steering wheel, causing the van to swerve across the road, and then grabs Nick's head. The van goes off the road and tumbles down a slope; Nick gets flung out and narrowly avoids being crushed when the van tumbles over him. It comes to rest near him, upside down, and he runs to see to Jennifer, who

unbuckles herself and falls onto the inverted ceiling. As if things weren't bad enough, they see Ahmanet walking towards them. She stops, and Nick grabs a section of tree branch and stomps towards her, with Jennifer cheering him on... which is when Ahmanet easily disarms him and sends him flying up and then straight down. Jennifer tries to get out to help, but Ahmanet is on her in seconds and grabs her by the back of her head. But before she can kill her, a grappling gun's hook suddenly rips through her back and torso, and yanks her

down. Men in dark suits and trucks appear, and various lines are shot into Ahmanet, managing to incapacitate her. The men pull Jennifer out of the wreckage, while Nick is approached by Malik. Just as he asks him who he is, Malik shoots him with a tranquilizer dart.

The next major scene happens at Prodigium headquarters, after Nick has been introduced to Dr. Jekyll. He's taken to the chamber where Ahmanet is being held, as Jekyll tells him, "Welcome to Prodigium, Mr. Morton. From the Latin, 'Monstrum vel prodigium. A warning of monsters.'" He reveals that Jennifer is one of their agents, and that their business deals with, "Evil, Mr. Morton. Recognize, contain, examine, destroy." Told that Ahmanet is being embalmed with mercury at -38 degrees, and that she has

selected him as Set's living vessel, Nick is then drawn towards Ahmanet when she speaks to him, telling him her curse will never be broken. She adds, "My chosen was murdered. You will take his place," and Nick, suddenly speaking in Ancient Egyptian, asks her why she was going to kill her chosen. As the flashback plays out in montage, Ahmanet insists she was going to give her chosen eternal life, and that she loved her father and only wanted his love in return. Nick mentions that she

killed both her stepmother and -brother, and she simply says, "They were different times." Again, Nick sees visions of himself in the desert with her, as well as in her palace bed, as she offers to make him a living god and become his queen. Jennifer tries to bring him back by calling to him, but Ahmanet tells him that Prodigium will kill him, just as her chosen was killed thousands of years ago. She leans in to his ear, saying, "It burns," and then screams it, snapping Nick out of his vision. Nick yells at Jekyll and the others to stop tormenting Ahmanet, who continues screaming, but Jekyll, seeing this, simply notes, "Fascinating."

Later, while Nick is invited into Jekyll's office for a drink, the ruby that goes with the Dagger of Set is discovered in the Crusader Knights' tomb. Ahmanet senses this, when Jennifer speaks to her in Ancient Egyptian, saying she's studied the language of the Old Gods. Ahmanet, in turn, reveals that she can speak English, saying, "What you truly wish to know is... what lies beyond the veil of death. To know what I have seen... And you will, when I kill you. They have found the stone. You brought my chosen here. What do you think

they will do with him now?" Jennifer then glances at the dagger, which is being housed in a machine for examination, and then sees CCTV footage of the removal of the jewel. While Nick and Jekyll share that drink, Ahmanet, quietly chanting, summons a dark-colored spider that emerges from a grating in the floor. Jekyll is informed by Malik that the jewel has been found, when Jennifer storms in, revealing Jekyll's plan for Nick. Jekyll nonchalantly spells out for Nick how it involves his death, much to his chagrin, and while the spider

crawls towards one of the technicians in Ahmanet's holding chamber and enters his ear, Jekyll goes to inject himself with the serum to stave off Mr. Hyde. In struggling with his inner evil, he drops the injector and Nick grabs it, intending to use it as a bargaining chip to make them drop their plan. Hyde then comes through, growling, "Oh, my dear Henry Jekyll, if ever I've seen Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend." Jekyll comes back through and Nick gives him back the

injector, while Malik drags Jennifer out of the room. Unable to fight Hyde off enough to inject himself, Jekyll yells for Nick to run, and hits the button on his desk that closes and locks the door automatically. Jennifer and Malik make it out, but Nick doesn't. When Malik refuses to open the door for Nick, Jennifer ducks through another door, this one leading into the library next to Jekyll's study, with Malik running after her. Nick is cornered against the door by Hyde, who laughs evilly. Nick 

grabs him, slams him against the door, punches him in the head, and forces his hand onto the palm scan. But when it recognizes Hyde's palm-print, it doesn't open; Hyde laughs, telling Nick, "They won't let me out, Nicholas. They never do," then smashes Nick's face against the scanner and flings him across the floor. In the containment chamber, one of the technicians sees that the mercury injection has been shut off, and then sees his now possessed co-worker remove an axe from a compartment.

Nick tries to go for a tray of syringes, but Hyde cuts him off, telling him, "You are a younger man. But you best learn to be wary of a man like me." He easily pushes aside the heavy examination chair between them, and Nick tries to attack him, but Hyde proves to be as adept at hand-to-hand combat as he is strong. He puts Nick in a headlock, saying he has a "collaborative" idea for the two of them, and isn't fazed by Nick punching him in the head. He manages to smash Nick's own head into the glass case containing various skulls and drops him

to the floor. While the possessed technician takes his axe to the fuse-box, shorting out the equipment, Jennifer sees the fight between Nick and Hyde through the library's glass doors, with Hyde flipping Nick across the floor. She tries to break the glass with a fire extinguisher, but is grabbed from behind by Malik, while Hyde grabs Nick and slams him against the glass. Both manage to break themselves free of their opponents, and Nick is even able to smash Hyde's face against the glass hard enough to splatter blood, but Hyde just

chuckles about it; outside, Ahmanet vomits up all of the mercury. Hyde punches Nick hard in the gut, while Jennifer still has to deal with Malik. Nick spies the injector, which is still on the desk, when Hyde tackles him, slams him onto it, and tries to bring his elbow down on him, only to smash a large hole in the desk instead. Nick reaches for the injector while Hyde has him pinned, and when he grabs his face, Hyde flips him over and jams his fingers under the bones in his back, actually

bending them upwards, as Nick yells in pain. Regardless, he manages to grab the briefcase that houses the injector and hits Hyde in the face, while Jennifer manages to knock out Malik by smashing him in the head with a book. Hyde grabs Nick from behind but he gets the injector and jams it into his chest. The serum immediately takes effect, and as Jekyll regains control, he says, "Well done, Mr. Morton. Well done." But Nick, still angry about his plan for him, flips him over the desk and slams him

into the side of a table behind it. The surges from the exploding fuse-box shut down all of the equipment, including the doors to Jekyll's office, allowing Jennifer to reach Nick. She tells him they must destroy the dagger's stone, as the curse will be lifted if they do.

Nick and Jennifer rush into the chamber and up the stairs to the walkway, avoiding the exploding and burning equipment; Nick violently subdues a man up there, although I don't know if it was necessary. He then looks down at Ahmanet, who looks at him pleadingly, but Jennifer runs up behind him and forces him to go on. Ahmanet lets out some angry shrieks, then rips her arms free of the chains and severs the two attached to her wrists. She climbs her way up the length of the chains, when a man enters the room and fires upon her. She swings,

forward, breaking herself free, lands on him, and quickly pins and feeds on him, restoring herself all the more. While Nick and Jennifer make their way out of Prodigium headquarters and into the museum above, Ahmanet summons up her power, vibrating the room and cracking the glass housing the Dagger of Set. Up in the museum, Nick and Jennifer hear her voice echoing, her power now violently shattering glass all throughout the base, including the museum's windows. This causes a panic, and Nick and Jennifer rush out of the

building to avoid the vibrating blasts, which literally chases them as the display cases they run by explode. They make it out onto the streets, with the tourists; meanwhile, those working in the Crusader Knights' tomb are warned of Ahmanet's escape and that she's likely heading their way. They secure the ruby in a special briefcase and close the opening to the tomb, with several armed guards posted on the other side and aiming their weapons down the tunnel, waiting for Ahmanet to

make her appearance. Nick and Jennifer round a corner, only to see a powerful sandstorm blasting down the street at them. They run for it, while Ahmanet, standing in the middle of the street, holding the dagger, manipulates it personally, as it envelops her. An angry face appears within it, snarling at Nick and Jennifer as it chases them, along with throngs of frightened civilians. The two of them are forced to cut through an alleyway, and on the other side, they both duck to avoid a car that gets flipped over them, with the sandstorm now enveloping much of London.

Vail appears, telling Nick he knows where the dagger's stone is, and he pulls Jennifer with him, fighting against the powerful winds. A double-decker bus gets flipped on its side and slides at them, prompting Nick to shove Jennifer side, while he jumps through the smashed windshield, gets flung along the tops of the seats, and lands in one near the back. Vail appears next to him, chuckling, "Wow, that was intense," then tells Nick to follow him. Elsewhere, Malik and the rest of Prodigium's security team head for the Crusader Knights' tomb,

which Ahmanet has already reached. Vail leads Nick into the railway tunnels, when he reveals that he's actually delivering him to Ahmanet; Jennifer, meanwhile, has found her own way into the Underground, something Ahmanet senses. As she walks down the tunnel to the main door, she resurrects the knights themselves, who rise out of their stone coffins like the living dead that they are. A huge crowd of zombies come rushing down the tunnel at Nick, while those emerging in the tomb kill everyone inside. Jennifer finds herself alone in

another tunnel, unaware that a zombie is running at her from behind. She turns around, just as Nick impales the zombie with a long piece of wood, before smashing his head and whaling on him with it. A train rushes through the tunnel, and he and Jennifer just manage to avoid it by pressing flat against the wall. However, another zombie is doing the same, trying to get at them, and they move along it to avoid him. Those guarding the tomb's door fire upon Ahmanet when she rounds a bend in

the tunnel, but she shrugs off their bullets and rushes at them. After the train passes, Nick manages to slice off the zombie's arm, then his head, slices another in half below the waist, deals with the other's headless body, and immediately puts down another. A huge mass of zombies comes rushing down the tunnel at them and they quickly duck behind a door, propping a board against it. It's just enough to keep the zombies out and they run for it, while the undead knights let Ahmanet into the tomb. They all kneel before her, as she walks in, finds the discarded briefcase, and picks it up to find the jewel. She sticks it onto the dagger's hilt, then prepares to finish what she started.

An undead knight lunges at Nick and Jennifer in the tunnel, slamming them through a stone wall and into some water on the other side. He drags them down through the water, but Nick manages to kick him loose and he floats away into the depths, while Nick and Jennifer come up in a pocket of air up above. There, Nick tries to calm down Jennifer, who's starting to panic, telling her that they're going to figure things out, when Ahmanet emerges from the water behind her. As soon as Nick sees her, she ducks back under, then drags Jennifer with

her. Nick quickly dives down and swims after them, as Ahmanet drags Jennifer through a long, underwater tunnel. Seeing stone coffins on the bottom up ahead, he comes up for some more air, with the bubble now very shallow, then heads back down, when he sees Jennifer floating at the end of the tunnel. He swims towards her, passing over the coffins, from which emerge more knights, until a large group is swimming after him. He reaches Jennifer, grabs her, and surfaces with her in the tomb, only for the knights to emerge, grab them

individually, and drag them onto the floor. Nick grabs a large rock and tries to fight them off, but they grab him and pull him along. He struggles against them, yelling for Jennifer, until they pull him along and set him down beside her body, as she floats in the shallows. Ahmanet appears and, seeing how distraught he is, says, "Don't blame yourself. She was always doomed." The knights all disintegrate into dust, as Ahmanet tells him, "There are worse fates than death," (a reference to the

original Dracula). She walks towards him, holding the now complete dagger, and beckons him to her. Enraged, Nick charges at her, but Ahmanet floors him with one slap to the face. She grabs his hair, wrenches his head up, and offers to take away his pain. But when she sees he's looking sadly at Jennifer, she throws him aside, bouncing him off a stone slab and landing him face-first on the floor. He gets to his feet as she approaches, and charges at her again, only to get smacked back to the floor.

Despite being outmatched, Nick crawls across the floor, refusing to quit, and when she grabs his foot and pulls him back, he tries to reach for a discarded sledgehammer. Instead, he grabs a small pick and stabs it into her thigh. This only annoys her, as she whacks him in the leg, causing him to yell out in pain, and flings him across the floor. She stomps towards him and he grabs her wrist, only for him to get lifted him up by the neck. She orders him to

give in to her, adding, "When it's over, you will thank me. I promise," and licks him. Unbeknownst to her, he reaches for and takes the dagger. And when he snarks about how they're never going to be an item, she angrily tosses him across the floor, hitting him against the slab's corner.

She's about to attack again, when she then realizes the dagger is no longer in her hand. Nick shows that he took it from her, to which she growls, "Thief!" He promptly slams the jewel against the floor, cracking it and causing Ahmanet to gasp. He goes to slam it again, but she yells, "Wait! Destroy the stone, and all is lost. You will be a living god. You will have power of life over death. Give it to me, my chosen. Give it to me, my love." As she talks, Nick glances over at Jennifer, and then reaches the dagger over to Ahmanet's hand... and at

the last moment, stabs himself with it. Ahmanet gasps at this, and Nick rolls over onto his back, convulsing as he sees visions of what happened in Ancient Egypt, as well as the acts of evil Ahmanet has committed. The jewel turns black, and Nick slowly closes his eyes, only to open them again, his irises splitting in two. Now possessed by Set, he removes the dagger, gets to his feet, drops it, shattering the jewel, and approaches Ahmanet. Acting through Nick, Set lifts her chin and calls her, "Setepa-i," causing her to shiver happily. He

goes in to kiss her, when he glimpses Jennifer's body behind her. This causes him to remember her earlier telling him, "Somewhere in there, I know you're a good man," and Nick momentarily regains control. Ahmanet forces her to look at him, allowing Set to briefly return, but Nick grabs her hand and returns to his senses, now remembering Dr. Jekyll's words, "The world needs a cure. You can be that cure! A sacrifice for the greater good!" Nick grabs Ahmanet's head and uses Set's power to

fling her across the tomb. He quickly runs to and pins her against the wall, shrugging off her slapping his face, then slams her down onto a stone coffin and, just as she did to so many people, drains her life-force, reducing her to a shriveled husk. He flings her off to the ground, and staggers over to Jennifer. He attempts to bring her back to life, but becomes distraught when he doesn't know how. Set attempts to take possession of him again, and he screams, "Just wake up!", into Jennifer's face, as his own face becomes demonic.

Following visions of her eyes snapping open and screaming, Jennifer does return to life and gets to her feet. Shaking and looking around, she hoarsely calls for Nick. Getting no answer, she sees Ahmanet's shriveled corpse, and finds the dagger, with its smashed jewel, right next to her. Jennifer turns when she hears something behind her and sees Nick standing nearby, in the shadows. She runs to him, but he yells at her to stay back, telling her that he doesn't know what he is anymore, and doesn't want to harm her. Realizing he's now

possessed by Set, Jennifer stands back, as Nick stays turned away from her. He suddenly jerks his head, sensing Prodigium's security coming for him, and decides to make his exit, promising to find her one day. Jennifer turns to see the team arrive, and when she turns back, Nick has vanished. During a closing montage, as Ahament is placed back in her sarcophagus, which is filled with mercury and lowered into a containment area at Prodigium headquarters, Jennifer and Jekyll discuss what will happen to Nick now. Jennifer insists that he's

still a good person, but Jekyll counters that he's now a monster, and they can't be sure which side he'll align himself with. At the same time, we see that Nick is now in Egypt, accompanied by the recently resurrected Vail. He asks Nick, "What are we even doin' here? Where are we going?", and Nick answers, "Come on, my friend. Where's your sense of adventure?" He mounts his horse and rides off, with Vail, before he joins him, moaning, "Oh, no." Jekyll tells Jennifer, "Whatever human

part of him remains, he will search the world over for a way to break the curse, to find a cure. Yet evil never rests, and it will call to him... always." As Jennifer tells Jekyll that Nick could be their greatest ally, he does concur that it does sometimes take a monster to fight another monster. The movie ends on a shot of Nick and Vail riding through the desert, as Nick leaves a sandstorm in his wake.

The music score was by Brian Tyler, a definite veteran of the industry, but one whose music tends to be very hit-and-miss; in fact, from my experience, his scores, more often than not, tend to be among the least memorable parts of the movies he works on. That's certainly true of The Mummy, as none of this music is as recognizable as the work by Jerry Goldsmith, Alan Silvestri, and even Randy Edelman in the previous movies; in fact, keeping it in line with the other movies we've talked about in the past few days, Silvestri's music for Van Helsing and Danny Elfman's work on The WolfMan are also infinitely better than anything here. There are no memorable motifs or themes to this score, and all it does, really, is emphasize the darker tone of this particular film, with bits of that Egyptian flavor, and very little of the sense of adventure that made the music for the Brendan Fraser movies so awesome. Seriously, the only interesting thing I have to say about the music is that Tyler actually started working on it before filming even began, and his complete score is longer than the movie itself! I'm glad he had a lot of inspiration to work with, but I wish it resulted in some more memorable music.

I apologize if this review sometimes came off as disinterested but it's really to care about a movie that retreads stuff you've already seen done better and adds little to them. Like I've said, The Mummy 2017 does have some highlights, notably in some rather elaborate and well-done action sequences and high production values, as well as a not bad too portrayal of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Russell Crowe, an interesting look for the title character, some fair production design and location work, and

some nice effects work here and there. But the characters are nothing special or well-developed, and some are even unlikable or annoying (if you're like me and don't care for Tom Cruise, this isn't going to endear him to you); there's more than a generous amount of bad CGI; the production design may be well-done but it's hardly anything amazing; the music score is forgettable; the references to past horror films, while sometimes okay enough, range from groan-inducing to just plain insulting; and the fact that this tried to kick off a shared universe involving the classic Universal monsters, only to immediately fall on its face and kill it, is just pitiful. The movie's biggest sin, however, is that it absolutely doesn't need to exist, as it does nothing that different from the Brendan Fraser movies, only without their sense of fun, spectacle, and adventure. In fact, the best thing this movie did is make me people appreciate those other movies so much more. If you want an idea of what the first Stephen Sommers movie would've been had Cruise accepted the role of Rick O'Connell way back then, I guess check it out; otherwise, don't bother.