"Bram Stoker's The Mummy" is another rather traditional mediocre mummy film.
**SPOILERS**
Robert Wyatt, (Eric Lutes) a budding art historian, is called by Margaret Trelawny, (Amy Locane) his ex, to her father's house to help her with a mystery. Once he gets there, the staff isn't receptive to him, and treat him as an outsider. When strange events begin happening around the mansion, Robert seeks out her father's old accomplice, John Corbeck, (Louis Gossett Jr.) And brings him back to the house. He believes that Margaret's father has come under the spell of Egyptian Queen Tera, one of the most powerful queens. When they find that Tera has taken possession of Margaret, Robert and Corbeck race to stop her from enacting an ancient curse.
The Good News: The film is based upon a novel by Bram Stoker, and in fact has been done before as the film "Blood from the Mummy's Tomb," too which there are certain similar characteristics. The fact that the evil being is called Queen Tera, the possessed woman called Margaret, the born-on-the-day-of-discovery angle, a ruby-bedecked ring as a means of possession, and the ailing father all pretty much the same between the films. This allows for some familiarity between the stories and that increases some entertainment if we know a little bit about what's going on in the film. The film does have some nice sequences. One of the best is an attack on a rainy night outside a phone-booth. It sets up the attack beautifully with an earlier attack, and here is the final payoff. It goes out in a pretty grand fashion that features some nice suspense to ago along with the payoff. The resurrection sequence at the end is nicely realized, and the way it plays out provides some nice moments.
The Bad News: The mummy sub-genre has had relatively little success in the mainstream, mainly because the myth surrounding it is one that's always been a hard one to film properly. It's always been a hard one to get down, and here the pattern continues. The familiarity with the other film raises the concern over where or not this can be a remake or not, and the debate is a tricky one as both sides have valid arguments. The fact that this is billed as a mummy movie is also a misprint. True, there is a mummy in the film, but there is no shambling corpse wrapped in bandages after people who desecrated it's tomb. It's more of a supernatural film that features a mummy as the source of a curse. There is such a slow pace to this that it can be maddening for something to happen. The deaths are OK, but fall into a rhythm that is pretty far apart. Apart from the deaths, there is really not that much action to speak of, so it's incredibly slow and a long time occurs before anything happens.
The Final Verdict: Mummy films traditionally aren't all that spectacular, and this one follows the pattern, with a slow pace, not a lot of action, underwhelming deaths, and a mummy that takes forever to get on screen. It's not a total loss, but it's not all that spectacular either. Exercise caution before giving this a shot.
Rated R: Violence, Nudity, some Language and a brief sex scene
**SPOILERS**
Robert Wyatt, (Eric Lutes) a budding art historian, is called by Margaret Trelawny, (Amy Locane) his ex, to her father's house to help her with a mystery. Once he gets there, the staff isn't receptive to him, and treat him as an outsider. When strange events begin happening around the mansion, Robert seeks out her father's old accomplice, John Corbeck, (Louis Gossett Jr.) And brings him back to the house. He believes that Margaret's father has come under the spell of Egyptian Queen Tera, one of the most powerful queens. When they find that Tera has taken possession of Margaret, Robert and Corbeck race to stop her from enacting an ancient curse.
The Good News: The film is based upon a novel by Bram Stoker, and in fact has been done before as the film "Blood from the Mummy's Tomb," too which there are certain similar characteristics. The fact that the evil being is called Queen Tera, the possessed woman called Margaret, the born-on-the-day-of-discovery angle, a ruby-bedecked ring as a means of possession, and the ailing father all pretty much the same between the films. This allows for some familiarity between the stories and that increases some entertainment if we know a little bit about what's going on in the film. The film does have some nice sequences. One of the best is an attack on a rainy night outside a phone-booth. It sets up the attack beautifully with an earlier attack, and here is the final payoff. It goes out in a pretty grand fashion that features some nice suspense to ago along with the payoff. The resurrection sequence at the end is nicely realized, and the way it plays out provides some nice moments.
The Bad News: The mummy sub-genre has had relatively little success in the mainstream, mainly because the myth surrounding it is one that's always been a hard one to film properly. It's always been a hard one to get down, and here the pattern continues. The familiarity with the other film raises the concern over where or not this can be a remake or not, and the debate is a tricky one as both sides have valid arguments. The fact that this is billed as a mummy movie is also a misprint. True, there is a mummy in the film, but there is no shambling corpse wrapped in bandages after people who desecrated it's tomb. It's more of a supernatural film that features a mummy as the source of a curse. There is such a slow pace to this that it can be maddening for something to happen. The deaths are OK, but fall into a rhythm that is pretty far apart. Apart from the deaths, there is really not that much action to speak of, so it's incredibly slow and a long time occurs before anything happens.
The Final Verdict: Mummy films traditionally aren't all that spectacular, and this one follows the pattern, with a slow pace, not a lot of action, underwhelming deaths, and a mummy that takes forever to get on screen. It's not a total loss, but it's not all that spectacular either. Exercise caution before giving this a shot.
Rated R: Violence, Nudity, some Language and a brief sex scene