Like Transformers 5, I wanted so much to like The Mummy, and tried to give it so many doubt benefits. She’s an immigrant and I’m liberal…with my hatred. Not of immigrants, just uninspired filmmaking. I don’t know why anyone hates immigrants. Some of them are cute.

‘That’s a pretty good idea’ I would write, desperately. And sometimes it was a good idea. Keeping the evil mummy in a mercury tomb is nicely visual, and actually smart from a horror point of view. It sets up the sense of dread, and when our leads inevitably – though limply – disturb the protection, We know what’s going to happen, and know why that they don’t.

The film, sadly, continued. At idea 725, you get what one does usually with those Lost Hydra types – everything is left in. The only thing different in retrospect is the distribution of random. The human in us wants a nice easy, repetitive pattern: bland, bland, bland, huh, eh, wha, trailer moment, bland, bland, huh, eh, wha, trailer moment, Tom Cruise running, bland and so on.

But the reality of random is clusters. See enough movies, and I have, and you’ll get some front load. Mummies that make zombies (notes include ‘Please raise a zombie army. Please raise a zombie army’ and they do. Then they kinda forget about. I think forgetting about it was somehow idea 853) and mercury and the best friend from American Werewolf in London are at the front, and have some fun potential.

As the randomizer wears on, there is the simultaneous realization that you’re hitting the shitty part of distribution plot. You know you’re in trouble when it’s an underwater medieval zombie knight subway movie. There are a lot of dots, and sadly the bits that could have been funny require someone who is.

I did actually sit in the trailers for the wrong cinema and saw 35 agonizing minutes of ads. When I realized my mistake at seeing the Wonder Woman slug, I hopped over to the equally small theatre 5. I felt like an idiot until I realized The Mummy had just started. 35 minutes of ads is now de facto in the UK.

Case in point. We learn, and this is quite a way in, that there is a Monster Squad, protecting us from evil and whatnot throughout the centuries. Must have stole that from Transformers 5. Potentially interesting, and if that’s your movie, go for it, and cut the first 45 minutes. Or just cut the first 45 minutes and let me go get some cake. After the chocolate I already had for the movie. I’m hungry for some unknown reason!

Sadly, Our Let’s Revive The We Already Own The Rights Universal Monster Squad has a second, more significant goof, in multiple senses of that word. It is headed by Mr. Russell Crowe, and Mr. Crowe is playing, well…he’s playing Dr. Jekyll.

What’s thrilling about this terrible, terrible idea, is the number of levels on which it manages to flounder. The mind attempts to countenance: first, it is blatantly silly from an audience perspective, as in ‘Wait, which movie are we watching now? Is this the part where they turn Howard the Duck from Star Wars into an autobot?’

‘Technically, he transforms into an autobot.’

I’m not sure how I was able to whisper this to myself during the film. It think I may have been a ghost…of myself!!!!

But let’s think about this from within the film itself, where this new addition really…uh ‘dulls’? ‘Unshines?’ ‘Manages to absorb every spectrum of light’? Sure. I learned verbosity…by silently observing and then incorporating the example into my own lexical system…from you!

If you’re trying to collect a bunch of monsters, the one person you would not elect is the one that’s both a monster himself and seems to change into a monster whenever is the worst time. When Mr. Crowe Hydes-out exactly this at the moment when the Mlle. Sofia Boutella (using French as the lingua franca of Algeria rather than the cumbersome asseyyidda) escapes and gets all killy.

You might give the film credit that a stupid idea has a secret twist, that being all Hyde-y, Mr. Crowe is able to do something that a normal human cannot. Instead there is much CGI and running around and Mlle. Boutella escapes.

Instead this additional terrible idea that can only lead to negative consequences leads to…negative consequences. It’s like if the twist was…the jail has no bars! And then the prisoners escape. Or if movies were always bad…and someone was there to see them!

This serves as our warning, or at least a glimpse into the solipsistic word our filmmakers inhabit: where the inexplicable are in charge. Their job is to entertain us but without a demonstrable smidgen of imagination, they do what they have done before: describe what they see. And Hyde in charge of the monsters is not far off base.