LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY
**
Directed by Lee Cronin.
Starring Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, Billie Roy.
Horror, US, 134 Minutes, Certificate 18.
Released in Cinemas in the UK on April 17th by Warner Bros
Firstly, there’s no getting around that title. After two films it hardly feels as if Lee Cronin has earned the right to stand alongside the likes of John Carpenter to stick his name in the title, as if everyone was clamouring to see what the director of the fifth EVIL DEAD film would do next. To be fair it does feel like a studio mandated decision to have the film stand out from all the other films that are called The Mummy, especially after Tom Cruise’s disastrous attempt to use the classic creature to kickstart the “Dark Universe” that was so quickly aborted back in 2017 and the upcoming sequel to Brendan Fraser’s 1999 summer blockbuster. It is just one issue that plagues this particular film that more often than not feels at odds with itself.
The film kicks off its mammoth two and a quarter hour running time with a lengthy prologue sequence involving a family in Egypt falling afoul of a sarcophagus dwelling figure before we skip to the Cannons, an American family who have found themselves in Cairo due to husband and father Charlie’s burgeoning news reporting career. A long sought after promotion seems to provide the key for Charlie, his pregnant wife Larissa and young children Katie and Sebastian, to return home but this is soon soured dramatically by the shocking kidnapping and disappearance of Katie. Eight years later and still haunted by this tragedy, the family, now with the added addition of eight year old Maud are soon overjoyed by the reappearance of Katie. The bad news is she’s severely disfigured, wrapped in a shroud and displaying violent tendencies due to her locked in syndrome due to the mysterious trauma she has faced. Oh, and she was discovered in a black sarcophagus that just fell out of a plane too. Charlie, troubled by his eldest daughter’s personality crisis, soon discovers an ancient conspiracy may be involved that now threatens him and his family in various grisly and disturbing ways.
The film has a bit of a personality crisis of its own. The Egyptian mythology that usually carries through these films is shunted aside for the most part in favour of possession tropes. THE EXORCIST is echoed here with the familiar figure of a possessed teenage girl. After a number of wince inducing incidents of gore the film reveals itself as something more in line with Cronin’s EVIL DEAD RISE with scuttling figures crawling behind the walls and upside down across the ceiling before unleashing all manner of sadistic tomfoolery on the under siege family. Last year’s superior BRING HER BACK is also echoed in a number of ways, not just in its willingness to go to a truly dark place with its children in peril scenes but a near plagiaristic copy of that films camcorder sequences which help fill in the blanks of the plot here.
Since his impressive debut THE HOLE IN THE GROUND, Cronin has covered creepy kids of all ages to mostly entertaining effect. After this, however, it feels that he really should look for a new and fresher angle. Hailing from Blumhouse, this has more in common with last year's WOLF MAN in its flawed attempt to tackle a classic horror figure from a different angle. However, even with its messy sprawling nature, this is a far more entertaining, and fun, film that seems to have more in common with the horror paperbacks that filled the shelves back in the 1970’s and 80’s with their tales of All-American families attacked by malevolent evils. The film truly earns its 18 certificate here, especially with one scene involving a comically oversized pair of nail clippers, and proves that Cronin has an offbeat and visually arresting style, the aforementioned plane crash proving to be an offbeat and memorable choice while there is a sense that none of this is to be taken seriously at all.
After the recent wave of films revisiting your Dracula’s, Frankenstein and his Bride, Wolf Men, Invisible Men and now Mummy’s it really does feel that this particular bunch of fondly regarded creatures should be given a rest for the foreseeable future. Dwindling audience numbers seem to suggest this is the case and for most of this messy film it feels like even Cronin cannot be bothered to tackle his subject matter here at all either.
Iain MacLeod