Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

I love the old Universal monster movies like many other healthy middle-aged males. I have recently started watching all the Hammer Production monster movies of the 1950s-60s, and I just got done with 1964s “The Curse Of The Mummy’s Tomb.” Not the best mummy movie out there to be sure, but that dusty, nostalgic, campy vibe still brings the good times. Seeing that shuffling, slow, crazy strong monster go after hapless victims and take massive damage without ever slowing down is always a hoot.

As for director and writer Lee Cronin’s “The Mummy”… to quote the lunch customer who was given a Diet Pepsi instead of a Coke Zero… this ain’t that!

Lee Cronin is not a well known director (his last movie was the sequel to the Sam Raimi “Evil Dead” remake, “Evil Dead Rise”) so to have his name displayed in the movie title is kind of an anomaly. Yet I will let it slide because his name comes as a selling feature to a few… but actually it comes as a warning to most… “Beware Ye Who Enter Here (unless you like the icky, nasty, horror-gorefests)”.

This is not the dusty mummy lore of those Saturday afternoon UHF movies. It’s not the comedic Brendan Fraser epic of the 90’s or the doomed action adventure of Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy” of the 2000’s. This new Mummy is something much more intense, sinister, brutal, stomach-churning and not altogether honest in its ideas and marketing. More on that later.

Jack Reynor plays Charlie Cannon, a journalist working in Cairo when the film opens, after a terrifying prologue in which a chamber housing a sarcophagus is disrupted. He lives with his pregnant wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), son Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams), and daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell).

One day, while Larissa is at work and Charlie is on a call, Katie goes to play with her secret friend Layla, who we discover has been giving the girl candy for days, grooming her for the unimaginable. Before you know it, Katie has been kidnapped, and an ambitious new detective named Dalia (May Calamawy) has no answer for the Cannon family. The girl has just disappeared.

Flash forward eight years and the family is now residing in New Mexico, plus they have a new child named Maud (Billie Roy) (do parent’s actually still name children Maud?). They live in this unbelievable house made specifically for horror movies, including a creepy basement and a strange expanded hallway within and behind the walls that apparently goes around the whole house.

Meanwhile in Egypt a cargo plane just crashed destroying all on board except a pitch black sarcophagus sticking out of the ground unharmed ala “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The authorities open the encasement to find the body of Katie Cannon (now played by Natalie Grace) who is wrapped and somewhat alive… or maybe it’s better to say embodied. I mean, this girl is barely being held together both physically and mentally. Violent ticks, uttering, weird strips attached to her skin, and palsied jerks abound.

Yet, and here starts the trope that stupid people need to be in horror movies or else the plot cannot advance, the Egyptian docs decide the family needs to take Katie home immediately because “healing will happen when she is surround by family”. Shouldn’t she be studied at least for a week or two? Whatever.

What happens next is a series of scenes where the family is dutifully trying their best, along with Larissa’s extremely unlucky mother Carmen (Veronica Falcón), to keep their sanity and unity amidst strong evidence that their long lost daughter is possessed by something unfathomable.

Detective Dalia also comes back on the scene in Egypt as she searches for answers for the family as to why Katie is acting in these demonic ways.

Lee Cronin’s mastery of the disgusting is on display. He has a variety of ways to show how skin, bodily fluid, teeth, toenails, etc, can be used to create maximum squirm moments. I can take some challenging visuals, but I was looking through my fingers with some of these gross scenes. Extreme close-ups of bloody body parts plus loud crunches, snaps and slurps abound. Typical household items like nail clippers and silverware take on disgusting dimensions in the director’s hands.

Katie goes from almost comatose when they first receive her to possessing her family members and crawling along ceilings to spread maximum dread. Still our stupid horror-trope family refuse to take her to a hospital and even after the untimely and ultra-violent death of the grandma, they decide to have the funeral in the same house where the murder happened AND where their unhinged daughter is terrorizing everyone within said house.

Eventually Detective Dalia and the family come upon the deadly truth of Katie’s situation and race to reverse this curse before it’s too late.

So like I stated before, this movie isn’t honest in its ideas and marketing because it’s basically a demon possession movie wrapped up in very loose mummy bandages.

When I see a Mummy movie advertised I want an ancient mummy coming back to life in modern times to wreck havoc. I don’t want a mummy that is only eight years old who happens to be a possessed girl giving off Exorcist vibes.

I’m sure Mr. Cronin realizes his main talent is to create effective demon possession flicks. Unfortunately for Mr. Cronin, there has been a glut of these kind of movies for many years, so how did he make his new possession flick stand out from the rest? Simple! He made it a mummy! And besides, the last few mummy flicks have been somewhat profitable, so there is still some fluid to be drained from the corpse of this franchise idea.

When I left the theater I was troubled by the content to be sure, but I was almost more troubled by the bait-and-switch the movie pulled on the audience—announcing a Mummy movie yet delivering another typical demon possession dud.

“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” has just about everything you should not see in a movie such as the aforementioned extremely graphic gore, children in major peril/being possessed by demons, children saying vile expletives, witchcraft, necromancy, stabbings, maulings, body part extractions, extreme trauma, some drug use and so much more.

There are about 15+ forms of the F-word, 3 Sh-words, 6+ C-words (yes, that C-word), and a few instances of taking the Lords’ name in vain.

There is a scene of the grandmother being choked with a rosary bead necklace and her prayers being ineffectual against the demon inside her granddaughter.

This movie plays out so much more like an Exorcist rip-off than anything that can be described with a mummy title. Plus this movie is way too long with a run time of over two hours.

The director’s two most recent films (including this one) dwell on sources of horror and threat coming from a family member that is possessed by an evil presence. This completely turns the narrative of one’s family being a safe place on its head. To be sure, some families do not have a normal safe environment, and we acknowledge that. However, the idea and concept of “family” has always been rooted throughout history as a place of safety, security and trust.

And why is that? Because God Himself created the concept of “family” and wants us to join His eternal family of love and salvation. When we accept Christ as our Savior and rely upon His sacrifice on the cross rather than our own good works for salvation, at that point of acceptance we are adopted into the family of God.

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba.” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…” —Romans 8:15, 16

That means, unlike what “The Mummy” shows, the idea of God’s family actually drives away fear rather than creating fear. God’s family is one of acceptance, love, trust, and eternal joy. Plus it is a forever family that will live together forever in eternity with our loving Father.

Early in the film an inexperienced Detective Dalia is asked by her sergeant if she really wants this job because she has never solved a crime where the victim did not die first. In an emboldened tone, Detective Dalia states she does want this job and asks what can give her better success as a detective. Her boss slyly states, “To be successful you must consider how many corpses you can stomach.”

Before being tempted to go see this new Mummy film follow the sergeant’s wise words… “consider how many corpses…” (and chaotic gore) “you can stomach.” Consider wisely… then wisely just pass it by.

• Violence: Extreme
• Occult: Very Heavy
• Vulgar/Crude language: Very Heavy
• Profane language: Moderate
• Drugs/Alcohol: Mild
• Wokeism: Mild
• Nudity: Minor
• Sex: None

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