From what has to be the busiest period of British horror filmmaking in history, shuffles The Rise of the Mummy, formally known as Mummy Resurgence, a film that has a slight connection to 2019’s The Mummy Reborn. It is made by the same producer Scott Jeffrey, and brings back the same mummy costume, if not the same mummy character, from the earlier film. Now, fortunately this is only a slight connection, because while I have to admit to being a pushover when it comes to modern day British horror, The Mummy Reborn was one I struggled to get through. That one was an in your face, out and out comedy that courted the youth market, and suggests out and out comedy and being down with the kids wasn’t these peoples’ strong point. One thought that ran through my mind while watching The Mummy Reborn was “this is such a great mummy costume… albeit rather derivative of the Eddie character from Iron Maiden albums… if only they’d gone in the direction of a straight horror movie instead”. Fortunately this second Mummy outing does give Eddie from Iron Maiden a more dignified British horror film to do his thing in. Fingers crossed Iron Maiden’s lawyers never see either of these films though.
I’m
still not sure I’d completely classify The Rise of the Mummy as a totally
straight horror movie. It does ditch
allot of the BBC3 level comedy that marred The Mummy Reborn. Tonally, this is more in the lineage of films
like Horror Hospital and Psychomania. Films
that work as straight horror if that’s what you want them to be, but also have
a cheeky sense of humour to them, and are happy if you want to laugh along with
them too. Make no mistake, this is an
utterly preposterous film, that seems quite aware of its own absurdity.
Of
the students, Holly (Abi Casson Thompson) is signposted early on as the one who
is going to go the distance, by virtue of the fact that she is allocated a
background story. Holly having a brother
who is bi-polar and eventually takes his own life. A subplot that does tie this in slightly to
The Mummy Reborn, whose heroine had a brother with severe autism issues,
although the manner in which these films tackle these issues couldn’t be more
different. The Mummy Reborn used the
autism subplot as broad comic relief, whereas the brother’s mental problems and
death are portrayed in a far more serious fashion here, and has clearly been
intended to add a bit of dramatic weight to the proceedings. The rest of the students are a less well
defined bunch, there is Kira (Mya Brown) who is good for a few snarky comments
and has amazing eyebrows. Holly’s
boyfriend, the token American (modern British horror being sweet on having
American characters, or at least American accented ones). There is also Jessie (Megan Purvis) who wears
a coat that looks as if it belongs to a second hand car salesman, and Lyne
(Barbara Dabson) who initially appears to be the sniveling coward of the bunch,
hiding in the toilets at the first sign of trouble, but then does a 180 and
proves to be quite handy with a baseball bat later on in the film.
Between
them these meddling kids accidentally manage to bring the Mummy back to life,
thanks to a combination of messing around with his bling, and Holly reading out
loud from an ancient book that the Mummy came with, this Mummy obviously having
been sold with added accessories. So,
soon ol’ dusty bollocks is up and running again and terrorizing the students of
this so-called University. A University
that never quite convinces as a University, instead looking like the High
School that it is in real life. They
even goof at one point and leave in a shot that reveals the name of the actual
shooting location…Archbishop Tenison’s Church of England School. Which I believe has previously been used as
an actual High School setting in another Scott Jeffrey production ‘Cupid’, and
checking out the trailer to his upcoming film ‘The Wishing Demon’ reveals it
has also been used as a location in that one as well. So evidentially Archbishop Tenison’s Church
of England School is quite the hub of British horror filmmaking at the moment,
I’m sure the Archbishop will be turning in his grave, but then again I don’t
suppose High Schools are being used for anything else at the moment.
I did
get an unexpected buzz of nostalgia from The Rise of the Mummy. I’m a child of the 1980s, and automatically
assumed that today’s high schools would be flashier, trendier affairs, closer
to the glamorous American high schools you used to see in movies back
then. On the basis of The Rise of the
Mummy though, little about British high schools appears to have changed since
the 1980s, they are still as mundane, cold and impersonal as they were back
then, Grange Hill style vibes abound from this film’s location. Which is to the film’s benefit, dropping an Egyptian
Mummy into such an otherwise dull and unmistakably British location makes for
an often striking juxtaposition.
To
give credit where it is due, The Rise of the Mummy is quick witted and a fast
talker when it comes to providing excuses for its budgetary shortcomings. The script manages to get round any awkward
questions over why there are only a handful of students and teachers in this
ahem… University –that just happens to have a sign saying Archbishop Tenison’s
Church of England School in the middle of it- by having the Mummy plunge the
location into a time loop. Meaning that
time is frozen and no one can enter or leave the building for a 24 hour
period. Whenever one of the gang attempt
to leave through the University’s reception doors, they reappear in the
reception, Groundhog Day style, a few moments later. The Rise of the Mummy also gets around
killing off characters on a regular basis whilst still keeping its very small
cast around, by bringing the Mummy’s victims back as sightless, snarling zombie
like slaves, who get deputized into doing most of the slow moving creature’s
dirty work.
Should
anyone be keeping count, The Rise of the Mummy also marks another Brit horror
appearance by Youtube Vlogger ‘Coolduder’, or as he is known in the non-viral
world Shawn C. Phillips. Like a bargain
basement Nick Fury, Phillips’ Vlogger character has so far shown up in multiple
British horror films (via various characters’ laptops) forever on hand to
explain the origins of whichever monster the Brits are up against this
week. So far his know-it-all Vlogger
character has worn the hat of a mermaid expert in The Mermaid’s Curse, a witch
expert in The Candy Witch, a tooth fairy expert in The Tooth Fairy, a scarecrow
expert in Bride of Scarecrow, and a leprechaun expert in The Leprechaun’s
Game. Here he adds yet another feather
to his cap as a font of all knowledge on Mummies and Egyptology, while at the
same time providing a case for all these low budget British horror films being
part of a shared, cinematic universe.
There is a hilarious moment when they cut between Coolduder dishing out
information on Mummies, which is delivered in his customary, excitable, rosy cheeked
fashion, and the facial reactions of Kira, she of the amazing eyebrows. Kira looks bored out of her mind and not unjustly
questions why when they are stuck in a time loop and being stalked by a Mummy,
they are taking time out to listen to this manic American rabbit on and on
about Mummies via a laptop. All of which
incenses Holly, who shuts Kira down by yelling “bitch, watch” at her. Which does seem a little out of character,
not to mention a bit rude, considering that Holly and Kira are meant to be best
friends, and Kira has been Holly’s shoulder to cry on during her brother’s
death, but she still gets called a bitch for talking over a Coolduder video
anyway. I guess Coolduder must command a
pretty high level of devotion from his online followers.
‘Current
events’ do seem to have left their mark on The Rise of the Mummy, and forced
the cast into masks for a number of scenes.
The narrative excuse that they give for this is that because the Mummy
is old and moldy, it may be giving off toxic fumes, therefore people need to
mask up when they are in close proximity to it.
However these ‘rules’ aren’t abided to throughout the film, in some
scenes people don’t seem to be concerned about being close to the Mummy without
a mask, other times every cast member is masked up. No idea what was happening being the scenes,
but to hazard a guess I’d say that filming guidelines became more stringent as the
production progressed. It does feel like
events beyond the filmmakers control forced this aspect onto the production,
rather than this being a deliberate attempt to hold a mirror up to the events
of 2020. As such it is a pity that this ‘masks
on’ aspect will forever timestamp this as a 2020 production, a year that, let’s
face it, we were all happy to wave goodbye too.
Something
I’ve found with Scott Jeffrey is that the films he directs tend to be of a
higher quality than the ones where he is only the producer. It feels like the directed ones are the films
where his funds, time and creativity are poured into. On the other hand, the producer ones, like
this, are more cheap and cheerful affairs that carry the impression of being
thrown together in a slapdash manner. I
mean, with The Rise of the Mummy, you have a fairly small cast, an off-season
high school location and a pre-existing Mummy costume, it looks like something
that was quick and easy to put together, as a sideline in-between directing his
own films. In terms of the films he has
directed…Don’t Speak…Cupid…Clowndoll…The Final Scream and the more recent Hellkat,
Jeffrey is going from strength to strength and has the kind of track record
that earmarks him as one of the most promising talents to emerge from this
period of British horror filmmaking. The
Rise of the Mummy, I think is likely to be remembered as a slight and fairly
lightweight title in his filmography, but c’mon there is still lots of fun to
be had here. I remember a couple of
years ago, someone remarking that Moonstalker starring Cliff Twemlow was the
closest Britain ever came to making a Don Dohler movie, but if anything I think
The Rise of the Mummy comes closer to being a Dohler movie relocated to a British
setting. Like a Dohler film, The Rise of
the Mummy doesn’t cheat when it comes to showing off its creature, it is not
shy of putting the Mummy right there in the first scene-and after a brief
downtime for the bereavement subplot to play out- amounts to a very simplistic,
creature feature runaround. In the past
when British films tried to do creature features, like Proteus, Grim and
Breeders from the 1990s, it seemed like they could never fully shake off the British
reserve and enter into the B-Movie ethos in the same way that low budget
filmmakers across the pond were able to.
Hang ups that Jeffrey’s generation of filmmakers appear to have thrown
aside, and whole heartedly embraced the trashy, having taken to making very unpretentious
horror movies like ducks to water. Maybe
now, more than ever though, we all need a silly B-movie diversion from real
life once in a while, and let’s face it diversions don’t come sillier than
Eddie from Iron Maiden stalking people around a Grange Hill School that is
caught up in a Groundhog Day style time-loop…do they?
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