The Mummy

Carolyn Maccabee's Review:

This movie tells the story of a gruesomely cursed egyptian high priest who returns to take revenge on the secret cabal that imprisoned him. While the movie seems like your basic thriller, I have to wonder about the influence of this cabal, referred to in the film as "The Magi."

At first I thought these Magi were a clever re-creation of the infamous Sons of Horus, an ancient and powerful conspiracy dedicated to preserving the secrets of the Egyptian precursor civilization. Unfortunately, the writer/director failed to do his homework, and the result is an utterly unbelievable parody of the real cabal. Does he really expect us to believe that anyone with the psychic powers available to the Sons of Horus would resort to guns and swords?

This movie just doesn't work.

Judith Tolbert's Review:

The Mummy is a tale of the classic birth/death/rebirth cycle with an ingenious twist. An ancient love triangle leaves the high priest Imhotep (a sort of inverted Christ figure) cursed to an undead state and imprisoned in a sarcophagus. This jouney below, incidentally, could be compared to those of Aeneas or Orpheus as well as Christ's three-day voyage to Hell after his crucifixion. After millenia of imprisonment, Imhotep is uncovered by treasure hunters and accidentally re-animated by a young librarian. (Is it a coincidence that this Earth Mother/Isis figure is named Evelyn - i.e. Eve?)

Instead of enlightenment, Imhotep returns to life filled with inhuman evil and great physical (instead of spiritual) power. A clever symbol of this reversal is the placement of the two magical books (the golden Book of Life and the black Book of the Dead) each in the place where the other was supposed to have been found. Of course, any observant viewer could have seen this coming from the very beginning because Imhotep was forced into his underworld jouney instead of willingly undertaking it.

This movie is a brilliant spiritual odyssey and social commentary filled with elegant symbolism. Be warned, however, that it is not for the frivolous movie-goer who is just out for a good time. This movie is serious intellectual excercise even for the most astute of critics.