Let me get this out of the way first. This movie is the first installment of a Universal monsters based shared cinematic universe, called the "Dark Universe." While this is primarily about the title character, there are plot elements introduced to the story that are essentially tied with other upcoming films related to this attempt of a cinematic universe. Some of those plot elements and characters might come off like fun easter egg world building, but it may also come off as unnecessarily distracting to the actual story at hand. The result is a movie that just does not live up to it's own ambitions.
As a monster movie, I did like the visual effects of the mummy herself, as well as some body-dysmorphia elements. Unfortunately her mummy/zombie "henchmen" were just not as impressive. With the monsters, there is an expectation of some horror elements, and apparently all this movie is interested in are the jump-scare moments that in themselves weren't really that scary. Since this seems more intent on creating an action-adventure-fantasy than an actual scary-monster-horror movie, the movie just became yet another disposable and generally forgetful would be blockbuster.
The characters that are played by Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, and Jake Johnson, are clearly people we are suppose to feel invested in, or at least tries to get us to feel that way. I would say that there might be a mild interest to see where those characters would end up past this movie, but the interest simply isn't that deep. Cruise and Johnson had some decent moments of entertaining humor, and Crowe seemed to enjoy hamming it up in his role, but those sense of fun simply weren't as pervasive to the rest of the movie.
If this was at least an enjoyable action-adventure-fantasy, I could easily forgive it for not being that successful at being a proper monster movie, or horror for that matter. Sad to say, but it's just not that enjoyable as an action-adventure-fantasy, which means this movie may not be the proper starting off point for this Dark Universe of films.
loveditenjoyedititsokay IT'S MEH itsterrible
