Tightly written and perfectly cast, this goofy late-90s horror-comedy about an Egyptian curse is the perfect comfort watch
I like The Mummy. At a pinch, I am fairly sure I could close my eyes, clear my head and play the entire movie in my head from start to finish. I have watched it that many times.
It began when I was 10, when my family all packed in my grandfather’s flat to watch the then new-ish movie on VCD. There were murders, dead bodies coming back to life, and a monster that could control sand into a huge version of its face, big enough to consume a plane! It was absolutely terrifying. I couldn’t wait to see it , and it has been playing loop, in the background of my entire life, ever since.
The plot of this 1999 film is really straightforward. Anck-Su-Namun immediately takes her own life, with the knowledge that Imhotep brings her back from the dead. But before he could, he is put to death and buried with a curse: if anyone should dare release him, he’ll come back as a all-powerful mummy.
The cinematic outcome is a complete joy. While technically it’s a picture of a 1932 movie of the exact same title from Karl Freund, the manager behind the classic Dracula with Bela Lugosi, The Mummy of 1999 is quite much its own thing: comedy and horror and experience all perfectly balanced.
The three of them spend the film getting into supernatural scrapes, fighting baddies both living and dead, and rebounding one-liners off each other comfortably and continuously. Arnold Vosloo plays the titular Mummy as equally ugly and menacing without undermining the humour of the movie.
The older I get, the more I realise that they caught lightning in a bottle with this film and, to the same degree, with its sequel The Mummy Returns. It is superbly written, perfectly cast and as they walk the difficult line between terror and bizarre comedy, somehow everybody is tonally on the exact same page. Never is the rare collision of great luck and ability in The Mummy more evident than when you encounter the abject failure of this third movie in the franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It’s a fantastic concept in theory and the majority of the core cast are in it, doing their best. And remove Weisz, reevaluate the function of the annoying son and throw in a couple of yetis (if I was joking), along with the magic is gone. Not Michelle Yeoh can save it. It’s abominable. Leave it out of the rewatch cycle. Pretend it does not exist.
The thing about seeing the same movie so many times starting from the age of 10 is that it has grown up with me. I don’t just love The Mummy for the nostalgia of it all — it is an objectively good movie — but memories of the different times I’ve watched it do operate like a golden thread throughout my life. I’m 10 seeing it with my extended family. I am 14 and it’s playing on the TV of my friend’s living room since she, her mother and I drink milkshakes, and as time passes, that day arrives to reside in my head for a representation of school summer vacations. I’m 17 and placing the DVD of The Mummy dip into the participant and my dad asks what movie it is. I tell him it is the sequel to The Mummy. “Then shouldn’t it be called. . .The Daddy?” He answers with a laugh.
The Mummy is the best rewatch movie — both for the comfort in its familiarity and at the newest details you appreciate on every seeing, even the 100th. Horror provides way to humour. Different jokes become less humorous. Villains become less black and white. I’m going to be watching this film for the rest of my life.
