If pulled hangnails, unknown bodily fluids, and peeling skin is your idea of a great time, then boy, do I have the movie for you.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy attempts to reclaim this Egyptian icon back to the horror genre with the director from Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin (who could’ve guessed!). Keeping the sarcophagi and the ancient evils but swapping out the swashbuckling for suffering, this new and unique take brings the historical oddity down in scale to a close-knit family dynamic full of sickening body horror. Unfortunately, its focus on gross-out shock value can be limiting.
The cinematic iconography of the “mummy” dates all the way back to some of cinema’s earliest days, with the talents of figures like Georges Méliès, Ernst Lubisch, Karl Freund, and Boris Karloff. Then, the slow-walking, moaning man wrapped in acid-treated bandages with his arms outstretched might’ve startled a more conservative audience in the early 1900s, but has gone through necessary modifications in order to scare modern viewers.
After a long run of B-adjacent horror movies, the conventional “mummy” monster got sidelined. It became an image of comedy, with multiple encounters with Abbott & Costello along with the Three Stooges. Relegated to mostly a Scooby-Doo villain, it wasn’t until Stephen Sommers 1999 hit, The Mummy, that finally gave audiences a reason to be afraid again. A few missteps after that didn’t help (looking at you, Tom Cruise), but Lee Cronin’s personal vision for this dark horror story centered around a mummified twelve year old girl was certainly refreshing – as well as revolting – for the sub-genre.
Cronin wastes no time getting us into this decrepit terror. After a brief introduction to the shadowy monsters lurking deep within an Egyptian family’s secret, we meet the Cannon family. Charlie (Jack Reynor in another wimpy horror role) is a news correspondent on location in Cairo with the rest of his family: his wife Larissa (Laia Costa), daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell), and son Sebastian (Shylo Molina). One day Katie, who’s been secretly meeting with a “magician” at the back of her garden, is suddenly taken.
The family reels from this as we jump eight years ahead. Katie may not be on screen, but you can sense her loss hiding in the background of this family’s daily life. New additions are the curious eight year old Maude (May Elghety) welcomed in alongside the emotional support of the brassy, yet devout grandmother (Veronica Falcón) back stateside in Albuquerque. Things are back to semi-normality when Charlie and Larissa receive a call from the Egyptian embassy telling them their daughter has been found alive.
As expected, this is where things start to get a bit spooky. Katie (played now by Natalie Grace) is not the bubbly girl she used to be. After being mummified and buried in a sarcophagus for eight years, it’s safe to say her look has changed. Her smooth skin is replaced by papyrus like patches, her eyes decanted and swollen, and her limbs jut out at odd angles. Her voice has been replaced by these sinister clicks, reminiscent of Milly Shapiro’s similar tic in Hereditary.
However, the horror takes a bit to kick in. And for its two hour runtime, it can’t afford to waste time. There are some obvious tells of scares to come with the emphasis on their houses creaking floor and finding spaces behind the walls, but really doesn’t do anything that really locks you in until its final third. Lots of subtle clues about Katie’s new state of being (that really aren’t that subtle) and a passive treatment to the undeniable terror in their home can make this a bit confounding at times.
While those classically hard “horror movie choices” become more rational through the eyes of a committed parent, it gets to a point of lunacy as Charlie lives in pure denial about his family’s situation. As an already thinly written character, Reynor doesn’t do much to liven up this performance. In fact, most performances come as expected, but Natalie Grace definitely commits to Katie’s demonic presence and helps to sell this whole endeavor.
One knockout sequence at a wake is sure to stun and recalls some of Sam Raimi’s bold swings. Aside from that, this needs more inventiveness in its horror. Katie can mentally manipulate with demonic precision, but the physical threat of her scratching her enemies to death gets lame fast. This leads to an overall weak finale and an even weaker final tag that goes for an unnecessarily intense revenge over any sort of meaningful sacrifice.
Where LCTM does find some solid footing is within its horrific soundscape. Cronin and his sound team make us so keenly attuned to voices, creaks, walls, nail clippers, and all of the gross fluids that show up. If I were to recommend one strong reason to catch this in a theater, it would be for how smart the sound design can be.
Though Lee Cronin’s The Mummy may have more in common with the likes of The Exorcist instead of its 1999 counterpart, it’s missing the originality to make it stand out. This will definitely be at its peak with a packed Friday night showing, but it unfortunately seems like audiences are a bit wary out of the gates. For fans of Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise or any wild body horror, this one was made for you. It’s just a shame there’s not more to recommend.
