An ancient princess is awakened from her crypt beneath the desert, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.

Rapscallion and ne’er-do-well Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his sidekick Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) are military guys who play by their own rules and disobey orders so that they can loot (or “liberate”) treasure from occupied countries. They stumble upon an ancient Egyptian burial tomb, which is weird because they’re in Iraq, not Egypt.  Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), the local archeologist, shows up to yell at them, and they all fly back to England, taking the sarcophagus with them.

The sarcophagus contains the remains of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), the heiress to her father, the pharaoh, but a new baby knocks her out of the line of secession, and she decides to slaughter her whole family, infant included. As punishment, she is buried alive, kicking and screaming (the tedious narration states she was mummified alive, but: no, she wasn’t), and must wait 5,000 years for the chance to be reborn.

Was that a lot of reading? Well, buckle up, kids, because this movie starts off with two (2) lengthy opening narration bits, and they’re just as exciting as reading those last two paragraphs while eating a bowl of plain oatmeal.

 The plane to the UK crashes, Tom Cruise is killed (OR IS HE?), and Ahmanet spends a good portion of the movie sucking out the life-force of everybody she stumbles across, replenishing herself and slowly changing from decayed corpse to sexy, flesh and blood woman.  This plot seemed to me a big steal from the previous Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser (frankly, this movie “borrows” a lot of plot points and gags from many other, better movies).

There is some good here: the movie looks gorgeous, from the sun-baked dunes of Egypt, all aflame in red and orange hues, to the living dead army Ahmanet raises to do her bidding. It all looks great and crisp and fluid and natural.  In addition to that, Sofia Boutella is fantastic as Ahmanet, full of menace and revenge and sweetness and even sympathy when she needs to be. You might recognize her as Gazelle from Kingsmen: The Secret Service.

There are other cute touches: Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) shows up to explain even more things, and shows off a collection of artifacts, including a vampire skull and the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s arm. He also makes a toast that echoes the “To a new world of gods and monsters” quote from The Bride of Frankenstein.

Unfortunately, this horror-action movie commits a major sin: it’s formulaic and boring. You can predict just about everything that happens plot point by plot point (and as a matter of fact, I even predicted two lines of dialogue and could finish the characters’ lines word for word).  Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise. Stuff blows up good.  Characters do things and make some horrendously stupid decisions based, not on what they would really do, but on the fact that something needs to happen next to get the story moving. It’s obvious in an almost sad way.  By the time the finale arrived, where some honest-to-goodness sacrifices were made for the good of all, I had stopped caring about these characters and was just looking forward to the credits.

 Uncle Mike sez stay away from this paint-by-the-numbers flick.  Go watch Boris Karloff or Christopher Lee or Arnold Vosloo or even Abbott and Costello.  You’ll thank me.