Director: Alex Kurtzman
Writers: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie
Stars: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis
Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes
Synopsis
England 1127 AD. A group of crusader knights bury a gem in a tomb with a dead man. In the present day, that tomb is unearthed by a huge drilling machine. A group barges in and says they’re taking over, Henry Jekyll is in charge.
He tells that he’s unearthed many ancient mysteries, and one of them is Princess Ahmanet. Ahmanet was to inherit all of Egypt until her little brother was born. He continues explaining, “Vowing revenge, she embraced evil and Set, the god of death. They made a pact that would unleash darkness itself.” We see Set doing something to her, and she gets writing and letters all over her body. She then kills the Pharaoh and his son. She was mummified alive and buried far from Egypt. Credits roll.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, Nick Morton and Sgt. Vail are liberating precious antiquities. He explains that this means they’re treasure hunters. They get pinned down with everyone in town shooting at them, but then there’s an air strike which makes everything OK. Except that fall into a giant sinkhole where Ahmanet is buried. Jenny Halsey shows up wanting her map back and says the find could be important, so they all go down in the hole.
The find mercury dripping from the ceiling into a small hole in the floor. There are many artifacts in the tomb, and the whole bottom of the place is mercury. Halsey says, “Whatever’s in there, those strings aren’t for pulling it, it’s for holding it down. This isn’t a tomb, it’s a prison.” The enemy is approaching, and they have to go, so Morton shoots the rope, which gets all the machinery moving. It raises the sarcophagus up out of the mercury. Morton gets a vision of Ahmanet thanking him for setting her free.
They hook it to a helicopter and airlift it across the desert, where they load it onto an airplane just before a sandstorm hits. Sgt. Vail is clearly very ill from a spider bite, and Halsey translates some of Ahmanet’s story. Vail stabs the colonel, and then the engine explodes. The plane is going to crash, so Halsey and Morton grab for parachutes. Halsey parachutes safely, but Morton crashes inside the plane.
Later, in the morgue, Nick Morton sits up. He’s not as dead as everyone thought he was. Vail gets up as well and explains that it’s only beginning for him.
Meanwhile, at the crash site, the police are examining the wreckage and finding more bodies, including a bandage-wrapped mummy. The mummy gets up and sucks the life out of both men. She orders the dead men to rise, and they follow her.
Halsey explains that they are looking for the dagger of Set, a knife that when combined with a gem, can bring back the death-god Set. The crystal was buried in the London tomb, and the knife is with Ahmanet. As she explains this, Nick keeps seeing visions of Sgt. Vail, who is still very much dead. She calls Jekyll, who tells her to bring Morton to him. Vail explains that Nick is cursed, and that he needs to over her. Nick soon finds himself being chased by the mummy and thousands of rats; nope- it’s all just a vision. Halsey thinks he’s just got mercury poisoning.
Meanwhile, the mummy is draining more policemen, and looking more human each time. Nick knows where she is, and he takes Halsey to the ancient reliquary where the dagger is. Nick is grabbed by the zombie policemen and held down, while Ahmanet pulls out the dagger and tries to stab Nick with it, but can’t. Jenny comes in and interrupts things, giving Nick a chance to escape. They manage to grab the Dagger of Set and run away.
She’s about to get them when the army attacks and captures her. It’s not the army, it’s Jekyll’s men. Dr. Henry Jekyll introduces himself. Jekyll starts to change in front of Nick, but injects himself with something and gets control of himself. Jekyll has Ahmanet chained up his lab. He runs a sort of monster research group that recognizes and contains evil. He explains that Nick has been selected as the vessel for an unspeakable evil.
Ahmanet is in a lot of pain, and both Nick and Jennifer disagree with this. Jekyll plans to paralyze her with mercury and then dissect her, and they don’t like that either. Meanwhile, in the London crypts, they finally locate the red gem that goes with the dagger. Jekyll drinks a toast to “A new world of gods and monsters,” totally ruining the best quote Universal ever had. He wants Set to enter Nick’s body, where he can be stopped.
As he changes into Mr. Hyde, we see spiders entering some of the workmen’s ears. Mr. Hyde gets released, and fights with Nick while the workman release Ahmanet. She drains a few guards and starts looking mostly intact at last. There’s a neat scene where she breaks every window in London to create enough sand for a sandstorm in downtown London.
Nick and Jenny need the stone. Suddenly, everyone is in a subway somewhere. Ahmanet calls for soldiers, and the dead crusaders get up out of their tombs. There are more battles, and she finally gets the stone and the dagger. Then there’s an impossibly long scene of Tom Cruise swimming away from underwater zombies.
Finally, it’s just Ahmanet and Nick and the dagger. She wants him to give in and allow her to kill him with the dagger. Nick gets the dagger and tries to smash the crystal on the ground. She temps him with the power of life and death the power of a god. He looks at Jenny’s dead body and stabs himself with the dagger. The crystal was definitely cracked. Will it work?
Nick pulls out the dagger and gets up. He’s clearly not dead anymore. Nick then walks over to Ahmanet and sucks her life out, making her a withered mummy again. Nick then crawls over and uses his powers to save Jenny. Jenny wakes up, and he apologizes for what he’s become and then runs off. Jekyll shows up and collect the mummy’s corpse for further study.
Commentary
This film tries to be everything and fails dismally. It’s funny where humor isn’t necessary, there are action scenes when dialogue is needed, and there’s dialog when anything else should be going on. It’s an action movie, then a mystery, then a comedy, and then there’s some horror thrown in random places. Mostly, it’s just Nick and Jenny running from one thing to another. Although there are obviously horror elements here, I’d have to really call this more of an action movie than anything else.
Jekyll’s lab is full of interesting Easter eggs. I immediately noticed the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s claw, and skulls with vampire teeth are easily spotted as well. Jekyll himself was useful for exposition, but to randomly change like that was unnecessary in this film. His character was supposed to be the “Nick Fury” of the Dark Universe, but he wasn’t all that impressive or even useful here.
Tom Cruise really can act, but he doesn’t do any of that here. He’s a clueless pawn throughout the film, and most of his lines are stupid comedic stuff that doesn’t really belong. He’s ostensibly the film’s hero, but in almost every scene, things are done to him, and he reacts. It’s really one of Cruise’s weaker roles. Even at the end, when he’s supposedly possessed by the god Set, we don’t see him do anything particularly interesting. He’s going off on more adventures, not something a super powerful god should need to do.
I can certainly see why this flopped at the box office. It’s a mess.