So, I took a trip to the cinema at Rochester [not Rochester] to see The Mummy, by Lee Cronin, not a reboot more a reimagining. But there are things to be written here before we get on with what I thought about the film. For some reason I mention the tide in these communications. I do know the reason I’m just not sure when I started doing this. I think I mentioned the tide to avoid mentioning the actual time I went to the cinema as I might have skipped off work or something a little earlier than I was meant to. The actual details are hazy now and so I mention the water levels in the river for completeness.
The picture was taken just before I entered the cinema. As you can see the water was lapping at the wharf edge and so the tide was high, probably at its highest. When I left the cinema the central river channel was obvious and the mudflats were prominent. After I watch a film at the cinema I rate it on IMDb, there are rules to this and there is a communication here that covers the system. I have started to rate every film I watch – so those on television / streaming – because I have, on occasion, found myself rewatching something I thought was rubbish but had forgotten about. It’s only about thirty minutes into the film that I realise I’ve already seen it. This especially occurs with rubbish science fiction films on Amazon Prime. So many films have storylines that seem familiar and so that’s why it can take a while to figure out if I’ve seen it before.
This film scored 4/10 in my system. It was close to a six for a while as I was watching it but it got slightly too gross for 6 and I stopped caring about the people and so I only watched to the end just to see how they ended it.
My first though while watching this film was “I don’t think birds have that much blood in them”. I’m not really sure what that scene indicated. Perhaps the awakening of the demon. I know I always want to kill pet birds when I wake up. After that the film progressed mostly gently and it seemed fine. I liked the silence of the crashing aircraft but the fact the explosion sound was instantaneous to impact and we were viewing from over a kilometre away really annoyed me. Like really annoyed me. Explosion noises take time to travel to you or the camera – get it right Hollywood.
This film didn’t have the colour or fun of the previous Mummy film. It was dark and gross rather than bright and fun and not scary. I mean this one wasn’t scary. Some make up and odd noises isn’t really enough to make a film a bother. I know I’ve seen a few horror films recently and they don’t really do much to me. The worst I felt in this one was when one of the old ladies throws up. It made me gag a little which I thought was an interesting reaction. The rest of the film just seemed to rely on loud stupid noises and “creepy” looking children and make up. Mind you, I loved it when the small daughter called their teacher a “cunt”. Always nice to hear that word from the “innocent”. But, I hasten to remind you, it’s been done before. “Jesus fuck my cunt” I believe was in The Exorcist and that’s a really old film.
This film just wasn’t that scary. It seemed a touch slow as well. I don’t know. A lot of my opinions have probably changed over time and I’m being affected by watching things on streaming services. Perhaps once you’ve seen a lot of films you get to feel blasé about most new films unless they really tell an interesting story. I did comment to Smith the other day that the last film that really disturbed me was The Omen, the original when it was shown on Channel 4. That’s probably because I was young and hadn’t really dismissed supernatural stuff by then.