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The Mistaken Identity of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

I think director Lee Cronin was way more interested in making an exorcism movie than a mummy movie, and the resulting attempt to pound a square peg into a round hole is not a very enthralling version of either. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy -a title choice it should be made clear came from the producers- seems to have a largely passive interest in mummification, ancient Egypt, and the other typical aspects of mummy horror stories -and that is by design. Cronin thought the notion of an average, relatable character being mummified was more frightening than just the mummy itself being a monster that stalks the protagonists. And that is a fair point and a curious place to come at a new version of The Mummy from. But the creativity to both the story and the horror mostly stops at that point.
The titular Mummy of this film is more of a possessing spirit than an entity in its own right, sustained through generations via a sacrificial host. We first meet it in the basement of an Egyptian family, tasked with its caretaking, and subsequently the matriarch kidnaps Katie, the daughter of an American TV reporter Charlie (Jack Reynor) and his wife Larissa (Laia Costa) living in Aswan. Several years later in an accident, a sarcophagus containing Katie is found and she, in a traumatic, malformed, feral state, is brought back to her family in Albuquerque. There of course, free of captivity, her violent powers start to take shape while Charlie with the aid of an Egyptian detective Zaki (May Calamawy) investigates what actually happened to his daughter.
This mystery component is probably the most interesting aspect of the movie, tying as much into themes of human trafficking as the occult and to its credit utilizing real Egyptian actors and more authentic Egyptian ephemera than is common of Mummy movies -although its mythologizing leaves a lot to be desired. Zaki is a likeable character to follow through portions of the movie and the clues that Charlie uncovers, such as the script from the wrappings impressed on Katie's skin (and which is in some parts peeled off), are creative and curious. But while the question of what happened to Katie is modestly compelling, Katie herself is not.
Katie, played under heavy prosthetics by newcomer Natalie Grace, is by and large just another demonic child archetype -creepy, disgusting, self-harming, and violent. She of course bears a particular resemblance in both role and thematic function to Regan from The Exorcist, and Cronin seems to consciously hearken back to that film in his emotional attention towards the parents' desperate love for her amidst this situation. And it is a really intense premise to grapple with -the differing degrees of loss presented by both losing a child and then having that child returned years later but as someone unrecognizable.
Yet for as much as Cronin intends that theme of grief to resonate (the filming of this movie was a healing process for him after the death of a parent), the seriousness of that theme takes a backseat to the shock horror elements. While Charlie is very much disturbed and troubled throughout the rehabilitation of Katie, Larissa is in denial for a substantial portion of the story -what she is going through is never fully explored. In the meantime, Katie exerts more influence on her siblings -especially a little sister who was born after she disappeared- and engages in visceral activities like stabbing through her own foot and eating bugs. All of it is textbook exorcism cliché, down to the real Katie on the inside communicating with her dad through a creative use of Morse Code, and conversely, using her demonic powers to toss a caretaker out a window. And despite some of the gross and gruesome imagery -especially at a funeral scene- it’s not nearly as interesting or compelling as better movies using such tropes more honest about what they are.
Cronin owns all of this, explicitly so given the movie's title -which implies a very particular or distinct vision unlike other versions of The Mummy that we have seen. But much like the last Blumhouse attempt at revamping one of the classic movie monsters, Wolf Man, there is very little that is new or compelling about this interpretation. This is a better film than that one, and is more clear in its attempt at actual thematic integrity, but the horror supplementing it is mundane. There are some moments that are disturbing in an elementary way -the bug-eating and self mutilation- but these don't leave an impression. And the assault on one character up to (and then after) their death is overdone to the point of being corny rather than scary. There are just three scenes that are legitimately creepy -one conversation between the sisters across a closed door, an 'undressing' sequence that is decently unsettling (if nowhere comparable to an equivalent beat from 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple), and the contents of a video tape -setting aside the movie's digital era time-frame- effective primarily due to its use of human trafficking imagery.
The movie wraps up ultimately in a thoroughly mediocre way -for both the storytelling and the metaphor (and the Exorcist playbook), it is entirely obvious. That’s not to say it isn’t right in its way, just underwhelming. And certainly the endnote that actually concludes the film is far less organic, a tacked-on second ending that endeavours to correct the first and suggest a happy resolution after all. It is one of the points of the film that feels the most blatantly personal in nature -a catharsis that is better for Cronin than his story. There’s an echo in the sentiment of the choices of better directors like Steven Spielberg and Jordan Peele, who have likewise made this move. It is just done in a manner so naked and distracting, it feels like undercutting more than anything else.
As far as re-imaginings of The Mummy go, I can’t believe it but I would recommend more the failed Dark Universe version from 2017, which at least had its insane corny universe-building going for it. Lee Cronin’s take feels positively empty by comparison -a movie that could switch out the mummy for any one of a dozen other types of monsters and lose nothing. There are some noble themes that Cronin on some level clearly wants his film to examine, but they get too bogged down in dreary horror habits that they lose their capacity to engage meaningfully. There is no unique vision for this footnote of a monster movie. Return it to its tomb.

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