1990s

The Mummy (1999)

By 1999 the old Universal monster pictures felt like relics, the stuff of late-night television and Halloween reruns. Then Stephen Sommers had the good sense to stop treating them as horror and start treating them as Saturday-morning adventure. His version of The Mummy dusts off the 1932 Boris Karloff chiller and reinvents it as a globetrotting romp through 1920s Egypt, all tombs and traps and one very charming rogue.

It made a fortune, launched a franchise, and quietly became one of those films that turns up on television every other weekend and somehow always gets watched to the end. Here is where I land on it.

The Mummy (1999) is pure 90s adventure gold, a swashbuckling, monster-filled romp that throws logic out the window and replaces it with charm, corny one-liners, and Brendan Fraser at his most likable.

He plays Rick O'Connell, a disgraced soldier turned treasure hunter who stumbles into ancient curses, undead priests, and the wrath of Imhotep (a gloriously over-the-top Arnold Vosloo). Alongside Rachel Weisz's brilliantly nerdy Evelyn and John Hannah as her scene-stealing brother, it's a classic trio of mismatched adventurers racing against time, magic, and mummies.

It's not good in a serious sense, no, the CGI hasn't aged well at all. The digital scarabs? The sand-swirling Imhotep? All look like they were rendered on a dial-up PC. But here's the thing: it doesn't matter. The film knows it's silly, leans into the camp, and moves so fast you don't have time to care. The action is fun, the romance is goofy but sweet, and the set pieces are straight out of old-school serials with a modern budget.

It's not deep, not scary, and definitely not accurate history, but it's endlessly rewatchable. A perfect blend of horror, comedy, and adventure that defined late-90s blockbuster fun.

Flawed by today's standards, yes, but bursting with heart, humour, and heroics. A guilty pleasure that earns its cult status.

I have seen it more times than I can count, and it has never once felt like a chore. For all its dodgy scarabs and daft plotting, it has a generosity of spirit that most modern blockbusters would kill for, and sometimes that is worth far more than polish. This is comfort food of the highest order, and I will keep going back to it for years yet.

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The Mummy (1999)

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Verena (2026)

Mad God (2021)

Saltburn (2023)

It Was Just an Accident (2025)

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