Can You Reverse the Curse? Fans of The Mummy are probably asking “what curse?” (and we’re not just being pretentious), but you’d have a lot more fun watching The Mummy (2017) than The Mummy Returns (2001), and a lot of that has to do with the absence of the mummies. For that reason, we felt it would be nice to put together an analysis of the curse/s. In the original The Mummy, an ancient scroll is found that tells of the power of a mummy and the curse that happens upon its first desecration. The scroll states that “The one who shall desecrate this unholy ground shall be doomed to walk the earth forever as a loathsome crawling corpse.” With the advent of the Mummy, however, many fans were curious why the dead Egyptian King wasn’t a curse at all, but a thing that comes back to life. It turns out, audiences weren’t the only ones curious, as John Grady, director of the first movie, has noted that the reason “The Mummy” works so well is that it contains the entire curse in one frame, which is more economical than splitting it up as two parts. Let’s break down what he means. The Mummy curse is the curse of undeath (hence the name Mummy) brought upon by a desecration. We’re first introduced to the curse in the opening scenes of “The Mummy,” when Evelyn Carnahan (Grady) is having coffee and reading a newspaper. She finds a photograph of an Egyptian mummy that’s for sale, and she and her boyfriend, Larry Maddox (Brendan Fraser), decide to acquire it. Larry, however, becomes interested in the history of the mummy, and in an attempt to learn more, he asks a local museum curator where he could find the mummy. It turns out the museum is not open to the public and it costs $10,000 to get in. Larry asks Evelyn to go into the museum with him, pretending she wants to donate money. When they enter the museum, Larry is taken by a museum security guard. Evelyn is able to convince the guard that she’s Larry’s sister, and she finds herself in a mummy room (which does contain a mummy). When Evelyn finds Larry hiding in one of the mummy’s wrappings, he tells her the curse and that he “doesn’t care about curses.” This is ironic, as Grady’s original idea for the mummy curse (before the script for “The Mummy” had been written) was that it would be the result of a curse, not an act of sorcery. Curious as to what the curse involves, Evelyn takes the mummy home with her. She decides to dissect it in an attempt to find a cure for her insomnia. She is awakened by the mummy and discovers that she has been turned into a mummy herself, forced into a state of suspended animation while it slowly digests her as a mummy. The mummy then sets about trying to find a willing human body to infuse itself with. In “The Mummy Returns” (a direct-to-video sequel that comes out in the future of the continuity of the original film, but was set in the present), the plot is slightly different. Evelyn finds herself unwittingly cursed when she picks up a mummified hand from her basement (which the curse placed there by an ancient curse-casting ring). The mummy starts draining her energy, until she manages to trap it in a fireproof safe in her basement. Mummified hands have also been making people disappear, which leads Evelyn to suspect that the spell has been passed down to her. After opening up the safe and attempting to kill it, she finds that it was a portal to the land of the dead, and that the Mummy was merely drawn to it because of her (this is only revealed in the later scene when Evelyn is talking with Tom Cruise’s Nick Morton). During the funeral of Evelyn’s father, the ghost of Captain Anthony Hendricks (John Hannah) returns to collect her soul. After having escaped the burning house, Evelyn is found and brought back home, but by this time she is a vampire. The curse in “The Mummy Returns” is the first one we see in the film, but there is a second, which begins with Evelyn’s sister and Larry, whom are playing a game of golf in Egypt, getting drunk. It turns out the game of golf is cursed, and her sister ends up becoming the undead. However, Evelyn has since become friends with the daughter of Captain Hendricks (Kristin Davis), who manages to protect her and Larry from the curse. “The Mummy Returns” also has a third type of curse, that which afflicts Evelyn. It is only hinted at, and the audience is never given full knowledge as to the curse that is cast on Evelyn, so the curse’s main function appears to be to show how cursed characters can be used as plot devices, creating tension and suspense. As we see in the first movie, Evelyn unwittingly casts a curse on herself, while Larry is attacked by one of Evelyn’s mummy wrappings, that he is attacked by a curse that can only be invoked through a desecration of an Egyptian tomb, resulting in being cursed to remain as a mummy (and eventually ending up buried in the ground). In the second movie, Evelyn unwittingly casts a curse on herself. She finds the mummy after having slept with her boyfriend, Nick Morton (Cruise), and it is implied that she is able to turn into a mummy while asleep because she is unguarded. In “The Mummy” (2017), the curse is hinted at, as Evelyn tells Nick that he will turn into a monster. When Nick becomes a monster, we discover that he may be the reanimated mummy of Imhotep. Evelyn also casts a curse on herself, however, the curse she brings back is not in the form of mummy, but a vampire. This may be another indication that not all curses are the same, and they must be different things, because it appears that the curse in “The Mummy Returns” can be transmuted. As a third party to both “The Mummy Returns” and “The Mummy,” we cannot say which is more or less cursed, but it seems apparent that the curse is meant to have three different types. Mummies can also bring bad luck, as evidenced by the death of a young couple (who happened to be dating) in “The Mummy Returns” and also by the death of Evelyn’s sister in “The Mummy.” What the mummies bring is usually bad luck, as demonstrated by Evelyn and Nick’s relationship. Is it a curse if you don’t know you’re cursed? In other words, is it a curse if it isn’t a well-known fact that you’re cursed? These are questions that we are asked and to which we don’t have answers. It may or may not be a curse, but it sure is a curse to be cursed. So far, the last of the The Mummy series, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” doesn’t focus on the curse, which is to be expected, because the series has been focusing more on special effects and action. It does provide us with some new and exciting information though. We’ll talk about that later on. Have you ever wondered what caused such a drastic difference in the curse between the second and third films in the The Mummy series? What about all of the other curses? Let us know in the comments below, and join in on the discussion with your fellow film and tv fans by heading over to the forum to join in on the fun with your fellow fandoms! For a full list of our current forum topics, head over to the forum index. The Mummy (2017) IMDb: 7.3 2017 80min IMDb: 7.2 2017 103min IMDb: 7.3 2017 93min IMDb: 7.5 2017 92min IMDb: 7.2 2018 The Mummy opens in theaters this Friday (April 14th, 2017).