When cheeky soldier/thief Nick (Tom Cruise) unwittingly releases the mummified Egyptian  murderess Ahmanet from her prison tomb beneath the Iraqi desert, he not only curses himself but begins to be pursued by the psychotic, bandaged ex-girlfriend (literally) from hell, in this creaky, scrappy and preposterous umpteenth remake of the classic horror movie.

Gone are the days when a studio was satisfied with a franchise consisting of a series of sequential sequels, now it’s all about the ‘shared universe’ where movies need only be linked by the occasional character or situation. And so with one eye on the success of Marvel and DC, the Universal Monsters brand is rebooted as the Dark Universe, promising the likes of the Invisible Man, Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein’s Monster and more. In fairness, Universal had the very first shared universe in the 1930s, frequently teaming-up its monsters in mashups like House of Dracula.

On paper, it was a wise move to launch the series with The Mummy, the previous three-film franchise (and Scorpion King spinoffs) proving that there’s an appetite for this classic tale. Less wise was using a Tom Cruise star vehicle as the means to get things moving. As with most of the Cruiser’s movies, the camera is frequently on his perfect smile and buff body, meaning that the focus shifts away from Ahmanet (Star Trek Beyond‘s Sofia Boutella) to Tom, and probably should actually be called The Tommy rather than The Mummy.

Star conceits aside, the movie is also mainly set in that faux American version of Old London Town, where the Police are naive bobbies and locals a bit too cockerny. It reminded me of Lifeforce, right down to the desiccated corpses and leaden dialogue, and there’s also steals from An American Werewolf in London, particularly the visits from Tom’s dead buddy.

Russell Crowe turns up as Dr Jekyll, revealing himself to be the Tony Stark of this new monster-fighting Avengers (this time we’re in the Natural History Museum instead of Stark Tower), but this is scenery-chewing stuff that veers between the po-faced and the hysterical, and he ends up on a Hyde-being to nothing. Annabelle Wallis as the female lead really has little to do but sound intelligent, spouting lots of legacy quest stuff and doing the odd bit of girlsplaining to help our dim hero blindly do ridiculous stuff just because it forms part of a prophecy.

It’s a shame that this movie has been certified 15 in the UK, as it feels more like a high-end 12A. There’s a few jumps and plenty of zombies, but excluding the early teens might damage the box office – and they might be more forgiving of this Da Vinci Code for mummies.

Verdict: Shocking, but not in the way a horror film should be, Cruise might be shouting ‘Show me the mummy!’ but you’ll more likely be trying to work out how they’ve created such a gods (and monsters)-awful mess of such a rich legacy. 5/10

Nick Joy