Rise of the Mummy

This is an absolutely terrible movie. It looks like it has been made by a bunch of college students. Horror? No way. The Mummy looks like a cross between a volunteer at a first aid course and a villain from the cartoon version of scooby-doo.

The acting is that bad I was actually wondering if Danny Dyer was going to make an appearance.

Don't bother. Appalling.

This is not a horror movie. Very predictable script. Poorly written for all the actors. Very poor acting. One of the worst movies I've ever watched. However, it's very entertaining if you like comedy and enjoy trying to predict the next line to be spoken.

After capturing a reawakened mummy, a special corpse in the British military hand it over to a social studies class to learn more about it, but when the creature is revived and begins harnessing the students' souls to complete a dark ritual must find a means to stop it before it completes the mission.

This was a rather enjoyable if still flawed genre effort. One of the main elements featured here is an impressive setup that manages to include more than just a shambling mummy to fulfill the curse. This still contributes a fairly impressive setup featuring the mummy going around killing those in its wake but the idea of the mummy trapping victims in a time-loop of sorts with the empty school, the lack of students, and messing around with the genre time-space set up in the area is quite a fun addition to the usual genre points. Utilizing the traditional employ of a curse involving the mummy searching for the final ingredient to finish an ancient curse all combines together into a pretty fun setup here, especially going into the later half where it manages to incorporate the logical payoff to the situation in an actual sacrificial ritual to enhance the suspense rather nicely. This one also generates quite a lot to like when the mummy comes to life and begins to carry out the rampage. After the initial attack in the woods where the creature is recovered, it moves into the rather impressive series of attacks and hypnotized coercions on the members of the town to allow it to focus on them running around the school grabbing the others to bring back to the mummy. The use of these followers attacking while in the possessed state offers quite a lot of creepy images and brutal actions alongside the more common ploy of popping up unexpectedly behind a fleeing victim and turning them or brutally killing them. Given that there's a lot of fun to like with the mummy's cheap but practical appearance and appropriately herky-jerky movements enabling some tense scenes stalking throughout the campus and even more to like with the possessed chasing the unaffected, these manage to hold the film up for the most part. There are some minor issues featured here. The main issue here is the somewhat sluggish first half that takes a while to get going. As this one finds the first half predominately focused on the classroom instructions on mummification and studying the origins of the mysterious mummy, it feels a bit stiff and sluggish. While these scenes are generally well-filmed and feature a lot to like involving their process as well as getting all the storyline setups involved, feature a little bit of action here which makes for a bit of a slough to get going. On top of that, there are some usual signs of low-budget work here, from laughable CGI blood, a general lack of gore in general, and the one-location setup which showcases a charmingly quaint one-location place. These features hold this one back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Within 30 seconds you could tell this was going to be absolutely brutal, and it unfortunately doesn't get any better.

Things which are or could be good about this is the plot. It's a fairly interesting idea for a premise. The camera work is fairly well done.

Things which are brutally awful about this, is everything else about the film. The script is abysmal and was clearly written by someone with only a basic understanding of English. At one point we have some guy ( i think he's meant to be an Archaeologist because he's wearing an Olive coloured Keffiyeh as a face mask, and all Archaeologists wear Keffiyehs...Right?) actually utter the words 'a dead corpse', as though there is such a thing as a live corpse.

We have some of the cast stumble over their lines a few times, no doubt embarrassed that they had to speak these awful lines.

I suppose as a College project, it's not a disaster, but don't release it, keep it to yourselves, share it with friends and family, not the wider world where it ends up on Amazon Prime.

I only gave this a 1 star purely for the effort they put in to make the film.

Well, for starters this 2021 movie titled "Rise of the Mummy" actually does have an interesting enough looking cover/poster, and it was initially that which lured me to watch the movie. Well, also the fact that it is a mummy movie and the fact that it is a movie that I hadn't already seen helped win me over.

I must admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any expectations for this movie from writer Shannon Holiday and director Antonia Johnstone. Which was a good assumption, because the movie's cover actually was the best thing about the entire movie.

The storyline was adequate, although it was just too flat and mundane. Nothing overly impressive or spectacular happened throughout the course of the movie. So it became a tedious affair to sit through "Rise of the Mummy" (aka "Mummy Resurgence").

The acting in the movie was adequate enough, taking the movie's premise, budget and production into consideration. You know that you are not going to be in for any award-winning performances when you sit down to watch a movie such as "Rise of the Mummy". But I will say, that people seemed to know what they were doing, so the acting performances were actually adequate. Just a shame that the script and storyline was so horribly bland and not giving the actors and actresses much to work with.

And then there was the mummy. Well, points to the movie people here for trying. But there just wasn't anything remotely scary about the mummy in the movie. And it was painstakingly obvious just a guy wearing a tattered suit wrapped in linen cloth. The idea was good enough, but it just had that Halloween costume feel to it, so it was hard to take it serious.

"Rise of the Mummy" is labeled as a horror movie, but there was nothing scary in the movie. Well, maybe if you are a pre-teen sitting down to watch the movie then it might prove a bit scary. But for a seasoned horror veteran such as myself, then this was a mere stroll in the park.

While "Rise of the Mummy" wasn't the best of entertaining movies with a mummy theme, it luckily wasn't among the top worst movies of the genre. The movie is watchable, sure, but just don't expect anything grand.

My rating of this 2021 movie lands on a generous three out of ten stars.