1/10
Do not operate heavy machinery after watching this.
23 June 2001
Warning: Spoilers
This has GOT to be one of the worst (if not THE worst) excuse for a horror film I've ever seen. I should have known that ANY movie directed by David DeCoteau ("Prison of the Dead," "Voodoo Academy," various "Puppet Master" sequels) would deliver the same basic junk that he's famous for...but this one goes one step further. He teamed up with Matthew Jason Walsh (the idiot responsible for such gems as "Zombie Cop" and "The Killer Eye."). The result, to say the very least, is not unlike standing a squirrel in front of a semi-truck. Complete and utter disaster.

There's absolutely NOTHING here. No plot, no believable characters, bad acting, bad writing, bad casting, (as many have stated here, it's supposed to take place on a college campus, but there's only nine people in the entire film). The entire thing looks like it was shot in someone's apartment, and they just kept moving furniture from room to room to make it look like a "school." How many fireplaces and kitchens do you actually find in a "museum?"

SPOILERS (as if anything could really "spoil" this movie further than it already is)

Why the title? "Scream of the Mummy"---The only time the mummy even screams is at the end of the film when he gets stabbed and lets out a low, wheezy groan (my grandpa used to sound like that when he rocked three times to get off the couch).

Why did the characters do the things they did? Among the "unbelievable" lineup was "Morris", a stereotypical "dumb jock" who for some reason is hanging out at a college of archeology. He would rather chase after girls than study, but the student he likes supposedly won't give him the time of day. Yet, after five minutes of talking with her, they're suckin' face, breaking into a museum together, and searching for booze so they can "go back to her place."

Of course, she's hacked to death before they can make it, but the Mummy has the foresight to drag her body from the museum back to her apartment, where he dumps it in the shower, then starts the water running so Morris will think she's taking a bath. That way, being the quick-thinking mummy that he is, he can pretend to be Morris' girlfriend and sneak up on him while he's laying on the bed. Morris sweet talks the mummy, thinking it's his girlfriend getting out of the shower. He can't tell it's a thousand-year-old rotting corpse because he's suddenly developed a bad case of narcolepsy and can't open his eyes. The mummy just keeps shuffling forward at his geriatric pace and kills him.

Then there's the other student who keeps saying how afraid of spiders he is---a great opportunity to introduce some, even if they had to crawl out of the mummy....but alas! There was nary a spider in sight through the whole movie.

The end of the movie was about as stupid as the rest of it...no, I take that back. MORE stupid. We've got college kids that have supposedly gone to school all summer together, shared a room together, partied together, etc...Then most of them, including their teacher, are hacked to death by a psychotic mummy. Yet, when the two surviving students emerge from the Museum, the girl asks "What went on in there?" "I don't know," the guy replies. "And I don't want to know. I just want to get on with my life." What?????

This movie is living proof that anyone with a typewriter and a bottle of Wild Turkey can write a "modern" horror movie. Too bad there wasn't a writer's strike...it might have saved us from this kind of garbage.
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