‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ is Squishy, Silly Horror with Less Edge
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy sees the Evil Dead Rise director take on a classic movie monster for Blumhouse, following the efforts of properties like The Invisible Man and Wolf Man. For the most part, the latest attempt is successful, especially after the mixed results of Wolf Man. However, the win comes with a few reservations. The movie delivers exactly as advertised. It’s an Evil Dead-inspired reimagining of The Mummy property. But given the risky, yet horrifying swings demonstrated by Evil Dead Rise, one would expect a horror film with more teeth.
Lee Cronin blends Evil Dead and The Exorcist
The film centers on a family living in Cairo. The father, Charlie (Jack Reynor), works behind the scenes for the news, covering events within the country. The rest of his family mostly live a normal life within the community of Cairo, as his wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), takes care of their daughter, Katie (Emily Mitchell), and son, Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams). The family setup is one of the few areas of the movie that feels rushed. We barely get to know their family dynamic before Katie is abducted by a mysterious woman (Hayat Kamille) offering candy, fruit, and magic tricks.
The local investigators bring on a new employee, Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy), who takes an idealistic approach to finding missing persons. But the idealistic perspective is zapped by her superior, who explains that the ratio of people he found to those returned alive, if any, is minimal. To make matters more complicated, the same superior wants to blame the father instead of actually looking for Katie’s abductor.
Eight years later, Charlie and Larissa have moved back to the States, Sebastian has grown up (Shylo Molina), and they have a new daughter, Maud (Billie Roy), who looks quite like Katie before the abduction. While their life is cautiously back to normal, things become rattled again as Katie has been found alive. Even stranger, she is discovered inside a sarcophagus in the wreckage of a plane crash.
Once she returns, Lee Cronin’s vision takes on a nasty blend of The Exorcist and Evil Dead. Older Katie (Natalie Grace) exhibits wildly bizarre characteristics, breathing strangely, her body contorted as if deformed, and a face that strongly resembles Supreme Leader Snoke from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Furthermore, Katie’s behavior becomes feral and unpredictable. There’s a demented sequence where the parents chase Katie through the walls as she devours a poisonous scorpion like it’s a chicken nugget Happy Meal.
This Blumhouse movie leans into gross-out horror
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy plays on the fear of not understanding what is happening to a child, similar to The Exorcist. It captures the horrors of lacking knowledge about what is wrong with your own child and of continually watching them decline.
The difference is that Cronin injects the material with old-fashioned Evil Dead mechanics. And we do not mean serious Evil Dead in the vein of Fede Álvarez. Here, Lee Cronin draws direct influence from Sam Raimi’s gross-out silliness. There are close-ups of toenails, bodily fluids, demons licking feet, etc. And the less we say about the embalming fluid sequence, the better.
The sound design is impressive as well, pushing the boundaries with cringe-inducing sounds like teeth chattering, flesh-and-liquid noises, and other heightened sounds that can make you squirm. It’s less scary than Evil Dead Rise, but it does have a goofy grossness that signatured the early works.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy lacks enough bite but still entertains
The film has a few setbacks. For one, it is twenty minutes too long. As the movie approaches its conclusion, it offers an ending that would have been perfect for one of the film’s central characters. Then it indulges in another ending that feels more like an unnecessary epilogue than a crucial narrative closure.
My disappointment with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is that it simply lacks the same punch as Evil Dead Rise. Cronin’s sequel to the Sam Raimi mythology brought the unflinching aggression of the Fede Álvarez film. There was a style, both in its atmosphere and in the unpredictability of the deaths from start to finish. At times, one could argue that Evil Dead Rise was mean-spirited toward its central characters. But that meanness gave the film an extreme sense of high stakes, making every moment feel dangerous.
While this film certainly has its moments, it never rises to the same dangerous feeling captured by Evil Dead Rise. And aside from one or two central characters, almost all the main players survive the film. Great horror is not afraid to take risks, and given the director, it’s surprising how artistically safe it feels.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy lacks the same bite as Evil Dead Rise, but it still manages to entertain by embracing the silly side of horror. Raimi’s early works had a slapstick approach to their violent and disgusting visuals. Even the movie Drag Me to Hell leaned into cartoonish, disgusting imagery like characters reaching into someone’s mouth or excessive projectile vomiting.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is an unapologetic, grotesque horror movie designed to make the audience queasier than to scare them. And the result is fun to experience with an audience, even if it overstays its welcome.
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