‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ review: Gore and bores galore

Rise of the Evil Dead Director Lee Cronin brings his trademark spooky kids and wild gore to The Mummy by Lee Croninwith mixed results.

On the one hand, the gore, when it arrives, is spectacular. On the other hand, it’s sandwiched in an underwhelming storyline that never really gets going.

What is this The Mummy by Lee Cronin about?

Natalie Grace in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Cronin’s version of a mummy story bears no relation to other mummy-related films, whether it’s the 1932 Universal Monsters film, the Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz franchise (which has a fourth installment coming), or Tom Cruise’s 2017 flop.

Instead, it presents a brand new mummy tale focused on a grieving family. Charlie and Larissa Cannon (Jack Reynor and Laia Costa) were once stationed in Cairo for Charlie’s reporting job. There, their daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) has disappeared, kidnapped by a mysterious woman (Hayat Kamille) who was hiding near their garden.

Eight years later, the Cannons have swapped the deserts of Egypt for those of Albuquerque, where they live with their children Sebastián (Shylo Molina) and Maud (Billie Roy), as well as Larissa’s mother, Carmen (Verónica Falcón). Their grief for Katie still lingers. They keep her childhood bedroom intact, preserved in all its pink splendor. They also haven’t taken a vacation since her disappearance, too afraid that something bad will happen to their other children.

However, the Cannons receive miraculous news when Katie (now played by Natalie Grace) appears alive, having been found in an ancient sarcophagus. It’s obvious that she’s suffered a lot of trauma during her absence: her skin is scratched and peeling, her limbs are contorted into a strange rictus, and she’s only able to communicate through a series of chattering teeth and wheezing breaths.

Faced with their daughter’s deteriorating physical condition, Charlie and Larissa are willing to do anything to help Katie feel safe again. Maybe that’s why they’re willing to overlook the many disturbing things Katie does, from cavorting in the crawl space of their house to directly headbutting Carmen. It’s a classic possession, but Charlie and Larissa’s love for their daughter and relief at seeing her back obscures any fear they might have of her…to a point. However, this point comes far too late The Mummy by Lee Croninis a punishing 135-minute runtime, which makes the pair seem less like worried parents and more like classic horror movie idiots who make all the wrong decisions until the movie tells them not to.

Once again, grief gives Charlie and Larissa a few excuse me here. Cronin, who also wrote the film, does a solid job exploring their guilt over Katie’s disappearance, as well as their efforts to establish normalcy even as a supernatural evil wreaks havoc in their home. But after a while, their willful ignorance becomes almost comical.

The Mummy by Lee Cronin is as frustrating as it is bloody.

Billie Roy in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Although it is presented as a reinvention of The Mummy, The Mummy by Lee Cronin is frustratingly formulaic. It draws heavily on scary child tropes, some of which Exorcist-backbends and curses, twisting them slightly to incorporate a bit of mummy lore. The scenes where the skin comes off like mom’s bandages are relentlessly stomach-churning, but other than that we’ve seen this bag of tricks before.

So do classic mummy story beats, including a visit to an archeology professor who can unravel most aspects of the film’s central mystery. Much more fascinating is what happens on the ground in Egypt after Katie returns home. There, Detective Zaki (May Calamawy) revisits Katie’s missing persons case, hoping to solve a mystery she began looking into eight years ago. His journey leads to truly tense sequences, so much so that we wish it was more of a police thriller than a film. Exorcist rehash.

The Mummy by Lee CroninThe saving grace of – and the reason it will likely appeal to many – is its blood, which pulls no punches. Every tear in Katie’s skin or bloody gnashing of her teeth is a visceral nightmare, and Grace is wonderfully unsettling as the latest creepy child in Cronin’s arsenal.

Yet all this gore rarely leads anywhere. Even after the most upsetting set pieces (the one involving nail clippers comes to mind), everything becomes a mild worry again. A family reunion triggers some serious nastiness involving teeth, vomiting, and shredded flesh, setting the stage for carnage that… never happens. Instead, we cut to a restrained Katie, with no sense of the broader impact of her outburst. To the person in my theater who blurted out a “Is that it?” after this scene, I’m here with you.

This scene feels like a broken promise, just like the rest of the film. The Mummy by Lee Cronin Ultimately, it doesn’t feel like a bold new horror saga as much as it does a hodgepodge of better films. Maybe some horror franchises, like a cursed sarcophagus, are meant to stay buried.

The Mummy by Lee Cronin hits theaters on April 17.