Director: Antonia Johnstone
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: Mummy Resurgence
Genre: Mummy
Plot:
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.
Review:
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.
Overview: ***.5/5
Managing to offer up some intriguing changes to the mummy myth while still having a lot of fun here with the traditional shambling mummy-on-the-loose, there are some enjoyable facets here that do hold this up over some minor drawbacks. Genre fans, those who appreciate this kind of low-budget indie, or those who like the creative crews' previous efforts will like this one while most others that aren't into those factors should heed caution.
This review ran as part of our 2023 Women in Horror Month celebrations. Click the banner below to check out the rest of our month-long celebrations including various reviews and interviews:
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