Movie Review: Day of the Mummy (2014)

Synopsis: Egyptologist Jack Wells is hired to join a team of archaeologists as they travel to a tomb of Egyptian King Neferu, known in Egyptian mythology as "the cursed king." While the rest of the team is there to both learn more about the tomb and figure out what happened to its now-missing discoverer, Jack's employer, Carl, wants him to locate and steal a large diamond known as the Codex Stone. Neither task is easy, both because of the dangers along their journey and the reanimated mummy of King Neferu.

Who's in it? The movie stars William McNamara, Danny Glover, Andrea Monier, Michael Cortez and Eric D. Young.

Review: My wife was still recovering from her mini vacation yesterday and I was recovering from mowing the lawn in hot/humid weather so, rather than trying to agree on a movie, I just picked out Day of the Mummy because it had been in my movie library for several weeks. That, and I figured "it's a mummy movie, so it can't be that bad."

Oh boy, was I wrong. To say this movie failed to meet expectations would be a gross understatement.

If you ask anyone what makes a mummy movie, or any monster movie for that matter, entertaining, I highly doubt they'll tell you "The exposition and uneventful journey to where the heroes are going." Yet, when this movie was created, it was as though the writers thought that was the best part.

Let's put it this way. The movie is 81 minutes long. The mummy (Brandon deSpain) shows up with only about 15 minutes to go and is defeated in about 10 minutes (give or take a couple minutes). The rest of the movie consisted of Jack (McNamara) being hired by Carl (Glover). A demonstration of the camera glasses Jack would be wearing throughout the movie (AKA, the point of view the viewer would see for most of it), an introduction to his team, the drive through the desert, a romance between Jack and Kate (Monier), a short standoff with some soldiers and the team wandering around the tomb completely lost. I honestly was beginning to wonder if the mummy didn't actually exist and was just supposed to be a metaphor for something.

Even Glover, who wasn't on the expedition and instead was mostly just shown in the corner of the screen as Carl communicated with Jack, looked bored as he clearly was phoning this performance in for a paycheck.

Also not helping this movie was the whole "found footage" approach it took. This isn't a movie that needed to be told from a first-person perspective and would have been considerably better had we seen where Kate continually disappeared to (I was starting to wonder if Monier quit at some point during the making of the movie) or, as I mentioned, seen more of the mummy and how/why it was resurrected. The film is called Day of the Mummy. The title literally tells you what the movie is about, I don't know why the filmmakers felt it was necessary to keep such a narrow point of view, as though they were trying to surprise us.

Final Opinion: Note to movie writers and directors - the whole point of a monster movie is to have a monster. This film is a great example of what not to do 

My Grade: F

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Here are some reviews of other mummy movies:

Movie Review: The Mummy (1959)

Movie Review: The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Movie Review: Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)

Movie Review: Pharaoh's Curse (1957)