Lee Cronin’s The Mummy joins the growing number of contemporary adaptations of the classic “Universal Monsters.” Though not actually part of Universal’s grand plans, this adaptation neatly fits into their current franchise, comprised of Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man. A hop, skip, and jump away from Universal Pictures and Warner Bros., Netflix dipped their toes into the monster pool with Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which strayed from the modern take for a more faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel.
If you weren’t paying attention, you would think these are all tied together, but nope. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy totally reimagines the classic creature originated by Boris Karloff, and brings us a story akin to The Exorcist. The results: a gory, mixed bag that will delight most horror fans but may disappoint those who want to engage in mythology and the classic lore.
Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) lives in Cairo, Egypt with his wife Larissa (Laia Costa) and children Sebastian and Katie, with a third on the way. Charlie is a journalist waiting for an opportunity in New York, and when he gets it, the moment of excitement is snuffed out by his daughter’s sudden disappearance. Unbeknownst to either parent, Katie had made a friend at the end of the garden, but on this particular day, the friend’s mother tricks her and takes her for mysterious reasons.
Eight years later.
A plane crashes in Aswan, Egypt, and discovered at the crash site is a sarcophagus, which, to the shock and dismay of everyone watching, is opened. Inside the thousands-year-old artifact is the girl who disappeared eight years prior. After being wrapped up like a mummy and having endured an unspeakable horror inside that box, Katie returns home. And with her, a great evil that was better left trapped in that box.
To put it bluntly, Cronin seems to have forgotten to leave the Evil Dead behind when tackling The Mummy. Strip away the Egyptian background, pull back the Egyptian characters and the mythology they bring, and you are left with a cross between The Exorcist and Evil Dead. The Mummy is just a story about a girl possessed by a great evil, foul-mouthed and disgusting, bringing calamity to her home and family. Charlie and Larissa are the bereft parents, relieved that she is back, but horrified by the near-animalistic behaviour she exhibits. The younger siblings watch from the sidelines long enough for evil to corrupt them. The Mummy we are accustomed to is nonexistent here, well, at least it stops resembling the traditional Mummy story up until Katie is discovered and leaves Egypt for Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is where The Exorcist meets Evil Dead begins.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy unintentionally plays with the audience’s expectations here: those who want a horror that simply thrills and frightens them get it. However, those looking for a bit of history, mythology, and a nod to the classics will feel robbed.
That said, the movie is not without its moments. Cronin plays with tension through his camerawork, Dave Garbett’s grim cinematography, and Stephen McKeon’s intense score. Along with Bryan Shaw’s sharp editing, the film is built on moments with unexpected and frightening payoffs. The film easily pulls us into the Cannon family’s distress while dealing with a traumatized daughter. A daughter who is definitely possessed. The use of extreme deep focus shots, a focal point of the film, is well placed and ratchets up the more disturbing moments. If gross and gory horror is your cup of tea, run, don’t walk, to your nearest theatre. Cronin is one of your people.
The performances are fairly good; Laia Costa is given the grieving, bewildered mother role, which has her emoting a ton more than on-screen husband Reynor’s Charlie Cannon. Costa, Veronica Falcón, and Hayat Kamille paint a compelling portrait of motherhood, but it isn’t explored deeply enough to warrant further discussion. However, the trio’s performances complement and balance each other, especially Costa and Kamille’s, who play mothers of three children but differ wildly in how they care for and love them. With that said, Kamille is underwhelmingly underused, as she is simultaneously the catalyst, the antagonist, and the answer. Her story and her family’s are incredibly compelling, yet are dismissed in favour of a rather tired narrative of a typical American nuclear family being terrorized by a supernatural being.
This brings me to the film’s greatest shortcoming, which concerns the performances of our lead, Reynor, and the honorary third lead, May Calamawy as Detective Dalia Zaki. The film’s lore, and that of the titular mummy, unfolds against the backdrop of a fairly by-the-numbers possession horror. At times, it feels like the film underestimates the audience and their ability to engage meaningfully with the mythology. At other times, the film seems crafted to be simpler than it was intended, which fits the growing theory that studios are intentionally making things dumber to suit those watching films in a distracted state.
That being said, the film fails to address a clear fact: Charlie and Dalia have what it takes to uncover the mystery of the mummified Katie. Charlie and Dalia have the skills and motivation to search for answers, and we can clearly see they have the resources to get results, but, again, the film seems to push the mystery to the background, only having Dalia pop up to reveal information the film has already illustrated. The film even loops in a professor from New Mexico who merely serves up context that Dalia, who is ACTUALLY IN EGYPT, could have discovered herself using the clues Charlie uncovers. The two, with the exception of one moment, never connect. This leaves the duo with little to do other than serve an assortment of expressions ranging from indifference to anger, shock, and terror.
It is likely that Lee Cronin’s The Mummy will make a ton of money; there is always a market for horror. Especially horror that really tests the limits of what the average person can stomach. The giant drink, popcorn and candy you got there, yeah buddy, put that stuff down. It’s best not to have a full stomach while watching this. If one is to picture this as an unofficial entry to the modern Universal Monsters franchise, The Mummy is in decent company with The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man. Despite lacking a distinct personality, it still fits into that concept. At the end of the day, if one is simply looking for something to disgust, delight, thrill and frighten them, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is sufficient in that regard.
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