Legend of the Mummy 2 (1999) (aka Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy)

Plot
Six young archaeologists are spending the summer with their professor and are working their newest discovery: the remains of an ancient Aztec mummy, found in the ruins of a temple. They don't realise that the mummy was servant to the Rain God and that one of the group is able to bring it back to life to do his evil bidding.

Review
I thought I'd never see a worse mummy film than the first Legend of the Mummy but I spoke too soon. Originally released as Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy, this film has since been renamed for it's UK release to pass itself off as a sequel to Legend of the Mummy. Quite why anyone would try and pass their film off as some sort of sequel or follow-up to one of the worst mummy films of all time is beyond me and no doubt said person was fired from their marketing job soon after but it's here anyway. Clearly an attempt to milk some cash from the mummy market due to the popularity of The Mummy, I'd class Legend of the Mummy 2 as one of the worst films I've ever seen. I do bandy that around quite a bit on here but usually other films have at least a handful of redeeming features. This has nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nought.

I can't see how something like this ever gets the green light to be released. There's just nothing remotely professional about it and it seems as though everyone involved did just the bare minimum to end up with a film. There's no story as we join proceedings with the mummy already being unearthed and sat on a slab in the compound waiting to be analysed. And that's basically it - the mummy is awakened by the last in the line of the high priests and then goes around killing the rest of the students in the compound. Try stretching that out for eighty five minutes! In fact the opening titles and closing credits take up about ten minutes between them (and the opening titles go extremely slowly!) so it's evident that there was a problem in padding out the running time to something standard. When the film confines itself to the same handful of rooms for the entire duration of the film, save for a few brief shots outside in the compound, then the scenes of the mummy shuffling around exactly the same set for an hour really grind on you after a while. To be fair, I'm not quite sure where the film is supposed to be set. A university campus? Someone's house? Wherever it is set, it must have been dirt cheap (or free) to film in.

The characters aren't even one-dimensional, they're virtually non-existent. Yes they fall into the stereotypical roles of jock, nerd, virgin, etc. but they're so poorly written that even any semblance of those stereotypes would have been most welcome. They're totally un-engaging characters - the ones we're supposed to root for are just as bland and non-descript as the ones who die first. There's no chemistry between any of the cast either and no sense that any of them had ever been in front of a camera before in their lives. The script tries to keep them 'hip' but ends up failing because there's nothing for them to do except walk around the compound talking to each other and searching the same two or three rooms over and over and over again. Even the mummy looks to be nothing more than an expensive fancy dress costume. From the first time you see it on the screen, there's no way that anyone would believe it had been dead for centuries. Having said that, it's the best thing about the film so I'm really trying hard to cling on to some small mercies. Above all, there's no style or visual flare from the director. Everything is literally from the 'point and shoot' mode of filming. No attempts are made to inject any atmosphere or tension into proceedings and the overkill on the lightning effects would have been best served with some sort of prior 'flashing lights' warning for epileptics.....all lightning and no rain I must add. David DeCoteau is hardly my favourite director but I've seen a few of his other films, Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge springs to mind, so I know that he's not incapable of making something semi-decent. It doesn't look like he tried here.

Verdict
I thought the first one was bad but this one is just as terrible for different reasons. Legend of the Mummy 2 is a non-event of a film - a pointless waste of time, energy and effort from everyone involved and everyone who has seen it. Its like a project from a college student with no story, no structure and is simply a collection of images and scenes which join together abruptly for ninety five minutes of absolute torture.