Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy was a thought-provoking experience, but it didn’t provoke the kinds of thoughts that writer-director Cronin probably hoped. While sitting through its interminable 133 minutes, I found myself parsing the difference between the unsettling and the merely unpleasant, and between the grotesque and the icky. In both cases, the former requires some engagement with human experience and consciousness while the latter — where this film permanently resides — merely relies upon witless bad taste and simple-minded gross-outs.

The film veers sharply away from the legendary Universal Monsters take on Egyptian death practices, which probably explains why the title distinguishes itself with a possessory credit for Cronin, best known for sequel-to-a-remake Evil Dead Rise. What he brings to the tomb is a hodgepodge of horror influences: besides mummies and bugs (can’t tell a story like this without some scarabs and scorpions, after all), he throws in demonic possession, body horror, and a creaky old house replete with a network of crawlspaces.

If any of this were scary, all would be forgiven, but we’re left with a bunch of cheesy jolts and a vulgar array of physical assaults, most of them aimed at young girls and old women. Cronin is never not going for effect here, but the onslaught of cracking bones, skin peeling, and teeth removal gets tiresome fast, as the movie figuratively asks the audience, “Am I freaking you out?” every 30 seconds.

The story centers on an American family living in Cairo: dad Charlie (Jack Reynor) is a TV news correspondent on the rise, mom Larissa (Laia Costa, Victoria) is a nurse, and the two are raising daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) and son Seb (Dean Allen Williams). A mysterious lady (Hayat Kamille, Murder on the Orient Express 2017) snatches the girl, leaving the family shattered. Eight years later, they’ve settled in Albuquerque in the big old house owned by Larissa’s mom Carmen (Veronica Falcón, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), with teenage Seb (Shylo Molina) and new younger sister Maud (Billie Roy).

Charlie and Larissa, who have maintained Katie’s old room in the hopes of her return, are thrilled to get a call from Cairo detective Dalia (May Calamawy, Moon Knight) that Katie (Natalie Grace) has been found alive. But as they bring her home, the parents realize their daughter isn’t merely near-catatonic because she’s been deprived of food and sunlight; her captors have made her a vessel for a long-dormant demon. And as Katie sheds her wrappings — inscribed with binding spells — that demon is looking to get out.

Not the worst set-up for a horror movie, granted, but Cronin never digs particularly deeply into his own premise. For example, while the film treats Katie’s kidnapper as the monster she is, it never for a moment considers that trapping a demon inside a human body is, in a larger sense, a humanitarian act and a horrible responsibility that has been passed down from generation to generation. And even when this plot thread steers into genuine dramatic and emotional stakes, the script backpedals as quickly as it can.

Horror fans who are here for the visceral thrills will certainly appreciate the sound team’s commitment to making the scary scenes as squishy and crunchy as possible, but even they will roll their eyes at the lengths to which Cronin and his editor go to generate a seemingly endless parade of cheap jolts. While the women tend to be on the receiving end of the violence, at least Falcón and Calamawy carve out some moments of intensity for themselves; poor Reynor has been directed to blink as little as possible, and while his eyes are certainly striking, his startled stare loses its potency before long.

At their best, mummy movies can contemplate mortality and history and the passage of time and the horrific demands of the wealthy and powerful. Otherwise, you get something like Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, so tirelessly dedicated to gutter-level grossness that it resembles a church-basement haunted house rather than a millennia-spanning tale of terror.

Director: Lee Cronin
Screenwriter: Lee Cronin
Cast: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy, Veronica Falcón
Executive producers: Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Macdara Kelleher, Lee Cronin, Pete Chiappetta, Andrew Lary, Anthony Tittanegro
Producers: James Wan, Jason Blum, John Keville
Director of photography: Dave Garbett
Production design: Nick Bassett
Editing: Bryan Shaw
Music: Stephen McKeon
Sound design: Peter Albrechtsen, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster, Blumhouse, Wicket/Good
In English
133 minutes