Army reconnaissance sergeant and secret pilferer of ancient antiquities, Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his buddy Chris (Jake Johnson) have just stumbled upon something huge. Thanks to a map of sorts that Nick snatched off of English archaeologist Jenny (Annabelle Wallis), whom he had earlier seduced and then never bothered to call again, they have located an old underground tomb somewhere in Iraq, and it’s absolutely chock full of treasure. But even as Nick and Chris are scrabbling through the knickknacks, and mentally totting up what they could get for the whole lot on the black market, a centuries’ old curse is being set in motion, and Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella)—an Egyptian princess whose body lies in the coffin in the midst of it all—has been woken, and she’s out for blood, quite literally.

Way back in the day, you see, it had seemed all but certain that Ahmanet—a fierce warrior and the apple of her daddy’s eyes—would be next in line to the throne. But the pharaoh had unexpectedly begat a son from his youngest wife, putting Ahmanet’s prospects in jeopardy. Desperate, she had made a pact with Set, the God of Death and War and All Things Terrible, and murdered her entire family. However, just before she was able to provide Set a young man’s body so he could assume human form once and for all, Ahmanet had been captured, embalmed in mercury and buried alive in the aforementioned tomb. Now that she’s out and about once more, and wreaking havoc in the Western world—namely, the city of London—it also appears that our yummy mummy has acquired something of an obsessive interest in Nick, and is hell bent on tracking him down and offering him to Set as compensation for screwing up last time. 

The Mummy, (mis) directed by Alex Kurtzman, is the latest reboot of a franchise that had first kicked into gear in 1932, and whose last iteration was The Mummy trilogy from the late 90s/early 00s starring Brendan Fraser. While I can’t call myself a fan of those films, I do admit that they were generally enjoyable in a light, campy sort of way, and that I probably wouldn’t turn off the TV if a rerun were showing. But this new movie isn’t just a simple, innocent update on that story; it comprises the first piece in what Universal Pictures has already planned as a whole network of crossover films featuring a line-up of “gods and monsters”—christened the Dark Universe, it’s essentially a none-too-subtle bid to one-up Marvel’s Cinematic Universe—which will include classic characters such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein’s Monster. But The Mummy’s heavy ambitions are undercut by lackluster content—a frustratingly weak script, weak performances and surprisingly weak visuals mean that mercenary justifications aside, there really is no perceivable reason for the film to exist.

What Kurtzman and the many writers who have been credited here seem to have forgotten is what makes monster movies appealing in the first place—yes, sophisticated CGI and make-up might be plus points, no doubt, but they’re almost peripheral to the charisma, atmosphere and persuasive mythology, often with a dash of moral ambiguity, that are crucial to creating effective supernatural characters. As baddies go, then, Boutella’s Mummy is fairly bland under the elaborate tattoos and that whole double-iris thing—a visual trick that is so often brandished that you’re less and less impressed by it each time—with no real motivation for her actions other than the old and unimaginative destroy-the-world malarkey. There’s also undue focus here on Ahmanet’s physical assets, outfitted as she is in tattered bits of cloth placed strategically, and always shown doing that slow, hip-swinging sexy walk or crawling around—in the absence of any attempt to afford her some real complexity or menace—that is just a touch off-putting. At least she fares better than the other female lead, played by Wallis, who serves little purpose than to pretty up the scenery with her shiny blonde hair, and give Cruise’s character something to rescue and thereby prove his gallantry—and not to mention, to awkwardly hand out the reams of exposition that the film relies on for coherence. 

What also comes through is a blatant, self-serious bid here to give the impression of epic proportion to the franchise’s mythology and scale—monologues about the “dark” this and the “ancient” that and the “evil” other abound. But it’s limited to big talk and little more, efforts geared more at promo-making and, of course, to plug future installments, than anything else. Indeed, the entirety of The Mummy can often feel that way; the “plot” itself is just a patchwork of familiar concepts that have worked elsewhere but don’t necessarily converge all too well. And humour, which previous Mummy iterations made decent use of, is half-hearted here, confined to a few staid jokes, some physical comedy and Johnson’s incessant barking. 

And while it would be a big ask of any actor to make something of such a shambles of a script, Cruise’s performance is especially disappointing given that, well, he should’ve been able to do this role blindfolded and with his hands tied—it’s the sort of thing he’s built his entire career on. But perhaps that’s precisely why he’s so ineffective here: maybe he’s just taken on one too many similar stints in big-budget vehicles—the Mission Impossible and Jack Reacher series, just to name a few—that it has all inevitably become a bit of a blur. Indeed, the actor feels like he’s operating on auto-pilot for most of the film, relying on the same old reflexes, the same old contrived charm, and merely biding his time, with the result that one is never truly convinced by his character (I could barely remember his name from scene to scene) or anywhere close to invested in his fate. 

You know the drill by now: It doesn’t matter what we say about this film, it is but one cog in the machine, and the Universe will unfold regardless, pulling in more and more A-listers, and pounding out another reboot, and another one, and so on and so forth. What strange times we live in.