When FANDOM Came Face-To-Face With ‘Tomb Raider’ Queen, the Mother of Death

Kim Taylor-Foster
Movies
Movies

In East London, you might expect many things. Hipsters, for sure. And a lot of vintage clothing. You probably wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow seeing The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Norman Reedus taking THIS snap outside a shop selling cigarettes and alcohol:

But you definitely don’t expect to get up close and personal with a desiccated mummy. And not just any old dried-out corpse either. The particular entombed cadaver we’re referencing is none other than Tomb Raider’s Mother of Death herself — Himico the mythical Queen of Yamatai. Yep, we came within spitting distance of the dehydrated monarch.

In a little nook in Shoreditch, a huge ‘stone’ door — actually made of wood and other undisclosed materials that you could actually miss if you were just going about your daily business — concealed a vast Tomb Raider-inspired labyrinth. And FANDOM ventured inside.

Out of the Clutches of Death

tomb raider
Actual Lara Croft, as portrayed by Alicia Vikander in the new Tomb Raider film.

What we found was actually an escape room experience. Inside, an actor helped set the scene and give clues to help solve a bunch of riddles. If you’ve never done an escape room or don’t know what the heck one even is, the idea is to put the clues together and complete physical and mental tasks to progress through the experience.

The first room of the Tomb Raider Escape Experience was Richard Croft’s office – an ample space so full of movie props, it was difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. But a little sleuthing later, and the team was crossing a precarious rope bridge, avoiding the spurts of hissing steam to tackle the next puzzler involving a mirror, wall carvings and some spotlights. Oh, and a curious map picked up from the previous room. Yes, they all interacted.

But it was the next phase of the adventure, a mysterious tomb, that brought us face to face with the Mother of Death. A figure who features prominently in the film. Warned not to touch the dead queen’s skin for fear of death, we had to prise a golden statuette from her cold, dead arms to complete a puzzle. But did we get out alive? Well, of course we did, but you can find out exactly how we got on in the video above.

Tomb Raider Experience in London, UK - 8 Mar 2018.
Watch your eyebrows!

Tomb Raider is out now in the UK and hits screens in the US on March 16. You can read the synopsis below:

Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished years earlier. Hoping to solve the mystery of her father’s disappearance, Croft embarks on a perilous journey to his last-known destination – a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan. The stakes couldn’t be higher as Lara must rely on her sharp mind, blind faith and stubborn spirit to venture into the unknown.

Kim Taylor-Foster
Kim Taylor-Foster is Entertainment Editor for Fandom in the UK. She was raised on an unsteady diet of video nasties and violent action flicks.