Who is Lee Cronin? Well, a sizable part of the global horror community knows him as the writer/director of the well-received Evil Dead Rise and also as the filmmaker behind the creepy 2019 Irish genre movie The Hole in the Ground. He is acting as an executive producer on the two upcoming Evil Dead movies (Burn and Wrath) alongside Bruce Campbell himself, with Sam Raimi as a producer. Are any off-the-street punters going to know those nuggets of nerdy information, though? The probable answer is “no”. Horror fans aside, not many people are going to realise Cronin’s significance to modern horror. So why put his name up front in the actual title? It’s not vanity. Apparently, it was due to a suggestion from studio head Jason Blum to make a demographic look forward to a potentially unique take on a well-worn brand. Probably to also differentiate it from the existing Brendan Fraser franchise (especially with a new entry due in 2028), and earlier versions (such as the classic Universal films or the Tom Cruise franchise-sinker). After much online malarkey and enthusiastic first reactions for this new take on a classic monster, the film is now out in cinemas in most global territories, including the UK and the US. And… err…most reviews aren’t great. Nevertheless, we’re still certainly looking forward to seeing if we have any Mummy issues.

 

Starting with a short, sharp prologue, we begin in Southern Egypt with a family arriving home at their nectarine farm. Having a pyramid in their cellar (as you do), they respond fearfully to something lurking in a sealed sarcophagus. Sometime later, Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor from Midsommar) is seen enjoying some leisure time with his young son, daughter, and pregnant wife, Larissa (Laia Costa from Piercing), whilst living in Cairo. An American TV reporter by trade, he has just received good news regarding a job back in the States. Unfortunately, this coincides with his daughter Katie being kidnapped by an unknown figure. Some eight years later, with the Cannons now living in New Mexico, Katie’s fate remains a mystery. That is, until a plane crashes in Egypt and a sealed sarcophagus is found in the wreckage. Katie (Natalie Grace) is within that stone coffin. Covered in leathery wrappings, emaciated and partly mummified, but still living, albeit in a “locked-in” condition. So, the Cannons rush to retrieve her, little knowing that this eagerness to return their daughter to their lives could destroy their family and unleash a terrible evil.

 

As most people expected, Cronin’s Mummy has about as much in common with Boris Karloff’s classic bandaged entity as Robert Eggers’ grim Nosferatu had with Bela Lugosi’s suave aristocrat. By “most people”, we’re excluding the numpties clogging social media channels, asking why Brendan Fraser isn’t in the film. You do wish the studio had avoided all this nonsense and picked an original title (“The Resurrected” was an alleged choice), as that would have been a more “honest” approach. Because this ain’t a typical “Mummy” movie in any way, shape, or form. None of the characters here needs to “beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet”, which was the infamous tagline for Hammer’s “The Mummy’s Shroud”. Nope. Despite an intriguing opening half and a genuine sense of dread, by the time you get to the midway section, the plot has skydived into a run-of-the-mill entry occupying the “creepy kids” and “demonic possession” sub-genres. In all honesty, with minimal tweaking, the film could very well be adopted into The Exorcist or Evil Dead franchises without skipping a beat or losing the tone.

 

That isn’t to say that this is not a film that is handsomely mounted, has an impressive sounding score (from Stephen McKeon, who has collaborated with Cronin before), is unashamedly gruesome, and provides solid entertainment for a horror-wanting audience. Because it does. And to be honest, there will always be welcome room at the Cinema Inn for 18/R-rated stuff like this, especially when it’s not a sequel or part of an existing franchise. But let’s get to the nitty-gritty pros and cons. First off, initial reactions (both positive and negative) have highlighted the bloodier aspects of the movie. And it does get grim at points, especially come the batshit climax. For the first hour at least, the genre aspects are generally suggestive and doom-laden. Apart from one wince-worthy bit of body horror involving toenail-clipping (yes, really), most of the shivers come from the sense of “wrongness” and the unknown. Katie is a largely passive (but frightening) presence in the family home. She’s a lazy-eyed, Darth Vader-breathing, teeth-clacking, wrinkly-skinned, occasionally spasmodic but mostly sleepy, teenager. However, Grace imbues her with a latent malevolence that is quite effective. Paradoxically, that sense of evil is somewhat diluted when she becomes more physically active. She gradually becomes a J-horror-like entity, scampering in the walls and suchlike, and then something else, and that atypical menace is lost a little. As the climax approaches, this is when it all becomes a little generic and overly familiar.

 

Once we get Carrie/Exorcist-type shenanigans pulled into the mix, it feels more like a slightly cynical and typical studio horror. It doesn’t help that we get a couple of supremely daft moments, including one ludicrous sequence where somebody suffers an obviously fatal wound, but still manages to manoeuvre their inner workings (trying hard not to spoil things here) to create a positive outcome. You’ll know it when you see it! Whilst entertaining, the denouement feels like a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-we-can-get-away-with type of horror, which is at odds with the intriguing and creepy opening acts we’ve had. Full marks for showing no mercy or emotional squeamishness when it comes to the younger characters, however. The most horrific scenes aren’t necessarily the ones involving teeth-pulling or skin-peeling. It’s the ones where the kids aren’t alright. The “found footage” moments of the ceremony are genuinely nightmarish, as is the discovery of Katie in the sarcophagus. It’s this mature sense of horror that stings most, rather than big bugs down the throat, acidic vomit, or telekinetic bullying.

 

The spiritual corruption of another character is also disturbing in its depiction, leading to a shocking carpet of C-Bombing (NB: Watch out for a cameo from Lily Sullivan from Evil Dead Rise at this point). After this, there is a gory and juvenile gag involving false teeth that probably marks the point where things get a little too silly and over-the-top. It’s the level of perceived “nastiness” that has caught a lot of people’s attention, but it’s telling that there is a karmic stinger in the plot and a very low body count overall, being important elements of the narrative that seem to have been missed by a lot of people. The main problem is that for a film called The Mummy, there is practically no exploration of Middle Eastern horror. Katie isn’t even “mummified” (in the proper sense). There’s no mention of Egyptian gods or curses. No skeletal zombies with arms outstretched. The big bad is very vanilla and sketchy, giving us very little idea of what their powers or intentions are. Would it have hurt the story to mention entities like Osiris, Isis, bring jackal-headed demons into the mix, or just flesh out the goals of the antagonist? It just seems like a missed opportunity in that respect.

 

There’s a fair bit of nay-saying there, and it honestly does feel like more could have been done with the concepts and potential here. But there’s still a lot to appreciate and enjoy for the most part. The theme of familial disintegration is there if you pay attention, something which Cronin used as plot points in both Hole and Evil Dead. There’s a blame game going on between mother and father, both of whom make questionable decisions. This also means that the well-being of the other siblings is being ignored to a certain extent and could spell disaster for all concerned. So, there are some interesting ideas at play, as well as the bigger concept of morality concerning the reason why Katie was subjected to her ordeal, which slyly digs at extremism and unchallenged religion. Although if you’re going to choose a young victim, wouldn’t an orphan off the streets make more sense than the daughter of a foreign TV celebrity? Just saying. Admittedly, a lot of this is lost in the chaos of the final scenes, where an intricate centuries-old ceremony can apparently be learned in minutes by video, and the essential paraphernalia is apparently just window dressing.

 

Whilst this review holds quite a few coulda/shoulda/woulda moans, the fact of the matter is that this is still an enjoyably mean-spirited and full-throttle studio horror. Is it overlong? Well, yes. It is really. Should it have taken the chance to play more with Egyptian themes rather than plunge into seen-it-before demonic shenanigans? Also, yes. But what is here is still incredibly solid and is crafted really well. The cast emotes as well as they can with the (sometimes awkward) material, and young actors Grace and Billie Roy (as Maud Cannon) do some particularly memorable stuff with their parts. Perhaps a lot of the negative connotations would have been lost if it had either fully embraced the Middle Eastern supernatural or become a more unique and definitive creature separated from the well-known title. Bearing all that in mind, though, horror lovers starved of grisly R-rated fun will still find the running time fly by and be struck by its commitment to shock. Mum’s the word.