Day of the Mummy

Out of the over 260 Found Footage films I have seen, only a handful combine exotic locales with a setting rich in history (see list at the end). There definitely needs to be more, for when a found footage movie manages to take advantage of the setting, the result can be an amazing vicarious experience. Unfortunately, it does not happen too often, and here the result is mixed.

DAY OF THE MUMMY is a found footage horror adventure movie in which a team of archaeologists are looking for the tomb of a cursed pharaoh, and the protagonist in addition is secretly given the task by the wealthy financier of the expedition, played by Danny Glover, to find a valuable gemstone.

The movie feels very much like a live-action video game, with the gimmick of a camera being clandestinely installed in the protagonist's eyeglasses and the financier boss periodically adding commentary to the happenings on screen through a hidden ear piece. I take it that the protagonist, an Indiana Jones type, is meant to be drawn as a complex character, not entirely good and not entirely bad, but he ends up feeling like a video game character, too.

Although the film has some atmosphere, the happenings on screen are always at arm's length and therefore fail to involve the audience. There are also some major requirements of suspension of disbelief (e.g. A signal going through even while deep inside a cave: the group reaching a chamber full of lit candles and never even asking who lit them and when, and so on). The ending was less than satisfying.

Still, there was enough to at least keep me entertained. So, while it is not a good found footage movie, I think the IMDB rating (2.6 as of this writing) is too harsh. The film may well have an audience in those who, like me, enjoy found footage movies with an adventure component and exotic setting.

There is one other ancient Egypt-themed FF movie I know of, made even the same year as this, THE PYRAMID (2014), which is a couple of notches better (see my review). Some other comparable movies I liked are

1. JERUZALEM (2015)

2. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW (2014)

3. FINAL PRAYER (2013)

You can see the miscasting in the opening scene, one half of a scene to setup a entire movie of cheap handy cam, point of view movie making, it was atrocious. The Mummy shows up very late in the movie, and we are never released from handy cam hell(if your on that tight of a budget, skip making a movie) or at least learn to make a movie that does not look like you made it for a boob tube channel.I kept hoping for the camera battery to go dead, unfortunately for me it held a charge to finish the 1 hour and 20 minutes of this wreck. For what he did in the movie, Glover was OK, it is just a shame to see him take work like this. Dreadful,Cheap,Cheesy. Save your money for a DVD of something watchable.

Watch the trailer, the movie is worse than the trailer, which is frankly appalling. I'd prefer root canal therapy without anesthetic to sitting through this rubbish. Shabby POV footage, tired storyline. The screenplay appears to have been written by a particularly slow witted 10 year old boy with a mummy fetish. I'd recommend watching damned near anything else besides this film. There is a plethora of better films about mummies that you could watch, pick any of them and you'll be well served avoiding this rancid POS. If you're the product of incest then this may be the film for you. Otherwise I advise avoiding this at all costs.

What a load of Rubbish.

1 hour and 20 minutes of my life I will never get back. Although as I had it on fast forward much of the time due to no dialog taking place perhaps only an hour lost.

Shocking acting and lousy story line.

I should have known as Danny Glover was listed. A cameo role. Seems like all these "has been" actors are nowadays giving up 15 minutes of their time to appear briefly in a "B" or "C" grade movie so they can get a cut.

Don't bother with this at all.

I don't think I've ever seen a more bored group of actors pretending to be actors. The characters are completely devoid of any sort of personality, charming or otherwise. They have no notable growth as people to make it interesting. Oh sure, the hero is a sleazy, greedy jerk who also believes that people's lives are worth more than money, but that doesn't make him heroic now does it? No, it makes him pretty normal I'd say. I've known more than a few people who behave like degenerates when left to their own devices, but will still go through heck to be there for a friend in need. People are funny like that, but I can't call them heroic.

And what's with the strong lady who is hired for "security"? Looks to me like she was hired because she's hot. Not to be rude, but she seriously didn't do anything useful in this movie except drop the tough guy act and crawl into the hero's sleeping bag before the first half hour was through.

The storyline is like being fed spoonfuls of dusty Egyptian fairy tales that are obviously garbage. It sounded fake even to me, a guy who knows next to nothing about Egyptian history.

Fortunately, special effects were limited in this feature. I'm not a big fan of overdone special effects, but having the camera blink out when anything exciting happens has never been a convincing method of building the tension to me. Especially when there isn't a reason for the camera to be blinking out.

But of course the biggest weakness this movie has is the "found footage" style of filming. I don't care how clever the writers think they are. "We thought up YET ANOTHER way to explain having a convenient camera to film everything in our movie! Yay!" It feels more like a ripoff of popular video games like "Metal Gear", with the boss routinely appearing in the corner every few seconds to bark an order, and the hero's voice coming in smoothly crystal clear, like it was recorded in a studio (it was, by the way).

Are there any good bits? I feel like I should mention some, but to be honest I'm having trouble thinking of any. The performance was very dry and honestly fairly dispassionate. Sure the actors ACTED angry, sad, in pain and the like, but it just still felt.. distant. Like you didn't have to care. Somewhere along the way the movie just got so cheesy that the viewer feels removed rather than involved. It fails to pull you in.

It's not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it really just feels completely unexceptional and easily forgotten. In my mind, this is the greatest failure any movie can have, to be unmemorable. So I'm giving it a 2 to be generous.