The Mummy: Resurrection (2022) (UK)

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At the turn of the 20th century, archeologist Felix Randolph is pleased as punch to discover the final resting place of the ancient princess Khenmetptah. He also discovers that the reason the tomb has remained undiscovered for thousands of years is because there’s a nasty curse in store for anyone who touches the sarcophagus. This explains Dr. Randolph’s plans on bricking up the damn thing in the basement of his estate but due to ill health, he’s unable to complete the important task. His ill health also brings his huckster nephew, Everett (a wonderful Chris Bell), into the picture when the topic of inheritance comes up. Everett owes a bunch of money to the kind of people you don’t want to owe money to and he sees this current situation as a fortuitous bit of luck. Unfortunately, all of the rare antiquities in his uncle’s collection will be donated to the British Museum. All except that cursed sarcophagus. And when Everett learns of the gold-covered and jewel-encased item just sitting on the property, he tries to make some money. It’s harder than he thinks because the curse is well known amongst anyone who would be interested in such an item. This brings us to his cousin Archie who lives on Felix’s property (which will become his when Felix passes) and is studying to be a doctor. Archie has been getting up to some interesting experiments (when he’s not smooching the cute maid Nancy) and when Everett learns of how Archie managed to bring some rats back from the dead, he gets an idea. A resurrected ancient Egyptian princess would surely bring in some money. Guess how well it goes. Archie learns that the sarcophagus is covered in a hallucinogenic oil but there’s a chance Khenmetptah already has a supernatural foot in our world and we see her appear, looking like an incredibly talented burlesque dancer’s idea of a sexy mummy costume, to claim the life of the archeologist who disturbed her burial site. Raven Lee definitely carries some presence as the not-quite-dead Egyptian princess and the makeup for her is kind of fun. Is it all a hallucination or is there actually a curse? Director/writer Steve Larson successfully crafts a period-piece horror flick on what I imagine was a minimal budget and brings some fun to this Mummy/Frankenstein hybrid. Helps that all the actors are way better than one would expect… might just be the English accents. The necessary exposition fills in all the blanks (and stands in for a bunch of the action) because a budget is important to maintain but the film still succeeds where it counts and kept me interested. Could be I was just in the right mood because it definitely suffers from a bad case of the “not much is happenings”. I don’t know, it’s like the kind of stage play I’d actually go see.