Opening up the Dark Universe franchise, in a new world of monsters and men, part time soldier, full time looter Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) inadvertently unearths the tomb of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) and when archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) is brought onto the scene for her expertise Nick becomes frustrated with the red tape and decides to cut some corners, which does not end well. After apparently dying in a plane crash Nick finds himself alive but somehow linked to the Egyptian Princess and with some assistance from Jenny tries to work out why he has been spared. In the meantime London underground builders have unearthed a tomb of crusader knights and the area is ceded to Dr.Henry (Russell Crowe) the leader of a mysterious group called the Prodigium, a mysterious society who investigate apparent Supernatural threats to modern humanity. These seemingly individual occurrences all become linked and begin a big budget adventure of hidden artefacts, clandestine societies and a battle against a mummy apocalypse all loosely based on the tales of the monsters from the older days of cinema which is quite ironic as there are many aspects of the film plot which are also a carbon copy lift from other, better, movies in the genre too, The Quatermass Experiment, Lifeforce and An American Werewolf in London to name a few of the obvious ones.

 

 

We do get Tom Cruise front and centre and once again his effort in a movie can’t be faulted. For all the faults he may have he rarely looks like he is not giving 100% and it’s no different here as he does as much as he can with the character, turning a very dislikeable guy into one that you want to succeed as he fights against his natural selfish instincts to do the right thing to battle the demons, all the while getting in some of his usual moments of on screen running which he does so well, but also surprisingly showing come very good comic timing with some decent one liners, while being cheesy, delivered in just the right way to garnish a giggle.

 

 

When Crowe and Cruise are on screen together, you can see the class in acting take a dramatic turn for the better as they work brilliantly together during their interactions despite the general weakness of their story point. These moments were arguable the strongest in the film from an acting point of view and it was a shame that they were so limited. Boutella does a good job as Ahmanet, looking both beautiful and menacing in equal measure, although her type cast of the generally silent villain is becoming a little repetitive and it would be nice to see if she can do more in a role and Wallis brought a nice, down to earth performance, amongst all the supernatural activity, grounding the action when necessary and bringing the film back into perspective although after all the recent talk of how great it was to see strong female characters in films there was an element of the damsel in distress about her role which is likely to upset some.

 

 

There are some very good action sequences and the CGI is excellent but there is a lot of lazy exposition, some terrible plot holes and moments of convenience which were hard to overlook. The poor script ensures that the decision making of the characters is at times worse than some B-movie horror film so for all the good work, generally laziness seems to have counter acted those positives. Also, for a so called monster movie it’s not at all scary which was a disappointment and the ending is just awful, almost as if they ran out of ideas, which is remarkable considering there were numerous script writers given credits.

Having received some terrible backlash from critics I was expecting the worst but it’s a not a terrible film. It has flaws (quite a few of them) and in analysing the movie critically, it doesn’t work well and a whole. In saying that, if you can treat it for what I can only hope it was created as, a summer blockbuster, fill your face with popcorn, while enjoying seeing a-list celebrities hop from one action sequence to another, kind of silly but fun movie, then you’ll walk away entertained although I can only hope the future of the Dark Universe has better in store if it wishes to survive as, with the rumours of The Wolfman, Bride Of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man all being mentioned the jury is still out on whether they can make this a successful series or not.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

©Darren Jones 2017