In 2014 Universal released Dracula Untold and bravely announced it would be the first of a Marvel Cinematic Universe-style reboot of their classic stable of monster characters. Despite a reasonable return at the box office, this toothless retread received a decidedly lukewarm reception and it seemed the studio’s monsterverse was stillborn.

Jump ahead a few years and Universal announce another stab at The Mummy, which will herald in the first (or rather, the first yet again) of its Dark Universe films (now playing down Dracula Untold’s connection and seemingly forgetting poor old Luke Evans’ Transylvanian Count in the process).

This latest catalogue of Egyptian shenanigans has more in common with the previous trio of movies headlined by Brendan Fraser (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon God) than the 1932 original starring Boris Karloff (or that film’s four successors). This means we’re in for another round of big budget, high adventure rather than anything remotely horrifying.

Tom Cruise is dull and woefully miscast, in a role that might have worked better with someone more adept at comedy (I kept thinking of Bruce Campbell), as a none-too-bright treasure hunter (read: thief) who inadvertently revives an evil Egyptian Princess with a plan to find a human host for the god, Set. The Princess has her eyes on Tom (presumably for the way he looks, because his character is rather irritating), and once Set moves in they’ll… I don’t know, take over the world, or yada yada, blah blah. It’s entirely possible I may have zoned out for a moment or two and missed some of the finer details.

This kickstarts a lot of big action set pieces, some dire attempts at comedy (including a huge and completely inappropriate swipe from John Landis’ seminal An American Werewolf in London), a lot of running around and away from dull CGI, and not one sequence that manages to be creepy or horrifying. Rather unfortunate for a would-be horror franchise, I’d say.

Russell Crowe shows up in an attempt to be the glue which holds together the Dark Universe but settles instead for chewing huge chunks of scenery and (presumably unintentionally) hilariously descending into a Mary Poppins/Dick Van Dyke Cockernee accent when his Doctor Henry Jekyll begins to play Hyde and seek. #sorrynorsorry

Sofia Boutella, as Princess Ahmunet/The Mummy, tries hard to do something with her role, managing to reveal shades of vulnerability through the bandages, through sheer force of will rather than anything the script gives her. It’s a shame the writers, producers and director didn’t trust the actress with more to do.

It’s astonishing and sad that Warner Bros/DC and now Universal have looked at the Marvel movies and learned nothing whatsoever from their success. When will studios understand that trying to shoehorn a shared universe into one movie is a bad idea!?

The film feels like nothing more than a checklist designed by a committee who wanted to tick off as many boxes as possible for Tom Cruise fans, giving them the kind of action they’ve grown used to from the Mission: Impossible series. Sadly this committee have seemingly never actually watched, or at least understood, a horror movie (and certainly none of the studio’s original films from the 1930s and 1940s), because bolting together a Tom Cruise action movie and a horror movie with no horror is most definitely a failed experiment that would have Doctor Frankenstein hanging his head in shame.

Finally and lethally, The Mummy is boring, it isn’t scary and the Dark Universe it tries so desperately to unwrap is dead on arrival.