The tagline for “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is “Some things are meant to stay buried.” That also applies to the misguided “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” which should definitely stay deep underground for eternity.
Let’s face it, Mummy has always been the lamest of the classic, old-school monsters, a grunting, slow-moving and poorly bandaged zombie. Dracula has a bite, after all, and Frankenstein’s monster has superhuman strength. What’s Mummy going to do? Lumber us to death?
Cronin evidently believes there’s still life in this old Egyptian cursed dude, despite being portrayed as the dim-witted straight guy in old Abbott and Costello movies or appearing as high priest Imhotep in the Brendan Fraser franchise.
So Cronin has resurrected The Mummy but grafted it onto the body of a demon possession movie. His Mummy is actually not a man at all, but a teenage girl who is controlled by an ancient demon and grunts a lot.
“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” — the title alone is a flex, like he gets his name on this thing like Guillermo del Toro, John Carpenter or Tyler Perry? — is overly long, constantly ping-pongs between Cairo and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and after a sedate first half, plows into a gross-out bloodfest at the end that doesn’t match the rest of the film.
Cronin, behind the surprise 2023 horror hit “Evil Dead Rise,” is weirdly obsessed by toes and teeth, and while he gets kudos for having an Arabic-speaking main actor (a superb May Calamawy) and portraying real-feeling Middle Eastern characters, there’s a feeling that no one wanted to edit his weirder impulses, like some light, inter-family cannibalism.
It starts with the abduction of a Cairo-based family’s young daughter, who resurfaces eight years later in a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus, catatonic and showing symptoms of severe trauma. The sarcophagus literally has dropped out of the sky as part of a plane crash.
“She just needs our care and support and time,” the dad (Jack Reynor, remaining good despite the slog) says until his daughter starts moving like a feral creature, doing horror-movie bone cracking poses, projectile vomiting, creeping behind walls and eating bugs. You know, like most teenagers.
He teams up with our Cairo-based cop to unravel the mystery of what happened to his eldest daughter, who starts messing with her family — levitating some, hypnotizing others to slam their heads into wood beams, all with a creepy, sing-song voice. It’s The Mummy as influencer.
“We can’t fix her if we don’t know what happened to her,” says dad, who goes so far as consulting with an expert on the cursive writing system used for Ancient Egypt.
Cronin leans into all the horror cliches — storms, dollhouses, flickering lights, muttered spells, whacked-out cults, bathtubs filled with rotting water, skittering insects and random coyotes — to establish a staid and eerie foundation, only to go over-the-top gorefest at the end, which prompted laughter at a recent showing.
The Egyptian-U.S. detective story grafted onto this monster movie is a nice touch but gets lost, and there’s perhaps the weirdest use of The Band’s classic song “The Weight.” (Cronin also uses a Bruce Springsteen song).
In publicity material for the movie, Cronin reveals that he made his movie after realizing there hasn’t been a truly terrifying version made of “The Mummy.” He’s right. Even after his own offering.
“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release that is in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong disturbing violent content, gore, language and brief drug use. Running time: 133 minutes. Half a star out of four.
