Death Becomes Her

Universal launches its new Monsterverse with The Mummy. Joseph McCabe disturbs the tomb…

- Matt Maytum

It’s easy to forget that The Mummy was once at the forefront of Universal’s wave of monster franchises. The third such film – after Frankenstein and Dracula – to spawn multiple sequels, director Karl Freund’s 1932 classic may not inspire the white-knuckle thrills it did 84 years ago, but it’s retained its haunting mood, atmosphere and eerie performance by Boris Karloff as an ancient Egyptian priest buried alive for trying to resurrect his dead lover – and set loose centuries later to kill while searching for her reincarnated form.

Forbidden love is also at the heart of director Alex Kurtzman’s new reboot, the studio’s second after the Brendan Fraser-starring 1999-2008 trilogy, and the first to serve as the cornerstone of a new shared Universal Monsterverse.

“The Mummy in particular was interesting to me,” says Kurtzman, in the midst of editing his new take on the horror legend. “Because, as a kid, I just remember being so terrified by the moment when Boris Karloff came to life. I was obsessed with the monsters, and specifically Universal Studios. The Mummy was one of the first. It set some new ground. That’s what we’re hoping to do again.”

To that end, Kurtzman and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Christopher McQuarrie have crafted a new story, set in the present-day Middle East and starring Tom Cruise as Nick Morton, a soldier turned tomb raider looting historical sites with his buddy (played by Jake Johnson)in an attempt to go home to America in style. Accidentally reunited with his ex – archaeologist Jenny Halsey (played by Annabelle Wallis), who works to protect such sites from terrorists and insurgents – he stumbles upon Ahmanet (dancer turned genre superstar Sofia Boutella), a millennia-old princess condemned to death for murdering the father who denied her her birthright.