LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY:
THE MUMMY MEETS THE EXORCIST AND EVIL DEAD!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** out of 4
WARNER BROS. PICTURES AND NEW LINE CINEMA
Something terrible has happened to Katie in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
This ain’t no cheesy Brendan Fraser adventure, you’ve been warned! Anyway, director Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground, Evil Dead Rise) is back to bring his take on The Mummy, the new horror film produced by Blumhouse and James Wan (Insidious franchise, The Conjuring Universe, M3GAN franchise).
Much like the recent Dracula and The Bride! this year, this has absolutely nothing to do with any of the Universal Monster movies, not the Boris Karloff Mummy, not the three Brendan Fraser films, and not even the dreaded Tom Cruise Mummy from 2017. It’s a director bringing their own unique vision to an iconic monster, and in this film’s case, it’s The Mummy, which I was somewhat curious about when it was announced.
Whether it turned out good or bad, the advertisements did get my attention and made me want to know what was going to happen. Plus, coming off of the nearly unwatchable, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) and The Mummy (2017) from Universal, you can’t go anywhere else but up, so I was interested in seeing what Cronin was going to do with The Mummy and…I don’t know, I kinda liked it.
It’s not a great film, and there are certainly some flaws with it, but I thought this was an interesting and genuinely unsettling approach to The Mummy with gnarly deaths and an Exorcist meets Evil Dead storyline. It’s also refreshing to see an actual horror Mummy movie again after the monster often being associated with the 1999 Mummy trilogy’s Indiana Jones-style adventure movie tone.
The film follows Katie (Played by newcomer Natalie Grace), a young girl who went missing without a trace until she’s discovered eight years later and is reunited with her family. However, her parents, Charlie (Jack Reynor-Transformers: Age of Extinction, Sing Street, Midsommar) and Larissa (Laia Costa-Black Snow, Only You, The Teacher Who Promised the Sea) notice something very different about Katie, something terrifying that turns this family reunion into a nightmare.
The film also stars May Calamawy (Together Together, Moon Knight, The Actor) as Detective Dalla Zaki, Verónica Falcón (Queen of the South, Perry Mason, Ozark) as Carmen Santiago, Mark Mitchinson (The Hobbit 2 and 3, Mortal Engines, Evil Dead Rise) as Professor Bixler, and Lily Sullivan (Mental, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Evil Dead Rise) as Miss Mills.
Overall, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is certainly a unique and ambitious approach to the monster and source material, and while I think it’s nowhere near as effective or clever as Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man from 2020, I found this movie quite creepy and unnerving at times. I will say it’s to the point where it doesn’t feel like a Mummymovie and instead something along the lines of The Exorcist or the recent Evil Dead movie that came out a few years ago (Coincidentally from the same director as this and also coincidentally the trailer for the sequel was shown before the film) and you could even consider this a better Exorcist: Believer than the actual Exorcist: Believer.
No joke, this film actually does have a similar premise to The Exorcist: Believer, where a child goes missing and is eventually found but comes back with something evil and demonic within, and now, the other characters have to exorcise the evil spirit. The big difference is Lee Cronin’s The Mummy handles it way better than The Exorcist: Believer because you give a shit about what’s going on here, and the mystery surrounding it all keeps you invested.
The characters aren’t anything groundbreaking, but I found them endearing enough with a strong family dynamic. Jack Reynor, whom I hadn’t seen since Midsommar in 2019, I thought was very good as the dad who acknowledges that there is something clearly wrong with his daughter (Though he does start to ask questions a little too late). Natalie Grace is amazing as Katie/The Mummy, who portrays a very different interpretation of The Mummy that’s more akin to Reagan from The Exorcist or the possessed mother from Evil Dead Rise than any previous Mummy in film, saying stock creepy lines, taunting the people trying to exorcise the demon, and doing gross and gory things…speaking of which.
The movie is gory as fuck and flaunts its R rating left and right. People get killed in grotesque, over-the-top ways, and even the possessed Katie ripping her own skin off is unsettling and makes you wince as you’re watching it. There’s also a scene involving toenail clipping that led to probably the best use of gore in the entire film, and it wasn’t even a death scene.
The mystery surrounding Katie’s disappearance is fascinating and essentially the hook of the film, to see how and why Katie has changed, and it’s pretty gripping. Like a gritty police thriller snuck its way into this supernatural Mummy horror movie, yet it doesn’t feel out of place.
While I did have a good time at this movie, it’s not a perfect film, and I would like to address some criticisms I have. The movie is 2 hours and 14 minutes long, and granted, I didn’t feel the runtime; it could have been trimmed down to like an hour and 40-something minute film, as it does start to get repetitive. I can’t say it got bad, and I was never bored during the movie, but it hits a lot of the same beats as other horror films I’ve seen before, and doesn’t really add much new to them outside of everything revolving around a mummified possessed girl.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is definitely far from being one of the all-time greatest Mummies and likely won’t be as remembered as the Boris Karloff Universal classic or the 1999 Brendan Fraser version, but it’s a decent and ambitious take on the monster that takes it back to its horror roots with a creepy and bloody Mummy flick with a “Stranger Danger” message woven in. It may not be a glorious “Tomb”, but if you’re the least bit curious about it, I’d say it’s worth a voyage through.
