'The Mummy' Returns...and It's a Nightmare

There’s a neat little 85-minute movie hiding somewhere in the marathon 134-minute running time of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, the on-screen title of which is "The Lee Cronin’s Mummy." That would’ve made for an interesting dilemma in the days when Sight and Sound insisted on printing the title of a film strictly as it appeared on screen. Ostensibly, the title is to differentiate this from Universal’s incredibly profitable series of films starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, a fourth installment of which is imminent. This is a (hopefully) stand-alone reboot which is much closer to The Omen or The Exorcist than it is a Mummy movie. Apologies if we’re delaying discussing this endless slog. . .

It's the Mummy Reboot You Didn't Ask For

Eight years after their daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace), goes missing in Egypt, she returns to the doorstep of heartbroken parents Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa) still alive but irrevocably changed. As her siblings (Shylo Molina and Billie Roy) and her maternal grandmother (Veronica Falcón) try their hardest to welcome her back into the home, they begin to realize there’s something wrong with Katie. Could it be that she’s a mummy, made so by the creepy woman (Hayat Kamille, very good) in the opening scene? You’ll have to wait 118 minutes to find out. 

It's More Evil Dead or The Exorcist Than The Mummy

Cronin previously made the workable but unremarkable Evil Dead Rise (2023) and seems confused about the task at hand here. This is much closer to an Evil Dead-style story of demonic possession than anything with the Mummy moniker attached. There are aspirations towards a grounded story of domestic trauma, but Cronin is no Ari Aster, and this is no Hereditary—The Mummy is actually longer, with significantly less story and thematic interest. There are some interesting kernels buried in here, but they’re so quickly disposed of in favor of seen-it-before set pieces that none of the movie’s big ideas take root. There’s a particularly tantalizing thread about the missing child’s return actually disrupting the family more, wrongfooting them as they finally recover from her absence, but that’s dispensed with as soon as it’s introduced.

Confused Plot, Elongated Length Prove Fatal

The mystery, which the film seems to think is some sort of enigma, is given away in the opening scenes. By the time it finally unspools, it’s unclear whether the filmmakers thought it was actually a twist or whether they believed it was just so gnarly that it’d be worth sitting through again. It’s a drastic misapproximation, as is the movie’s relationship to its gross-out set pieces. Aside from one admirably nasty but pretty low-key gag involving deviled eggs, there’s nothing here that would rile even the most passive of genre enthusiasts. Cronin’s commitment to practical grue is commendable, but that’s not worth much when there’s no emotional attachment to the characters at the center.

With a sub-90-minute runtime, The Mummy would’ve been a perfectly passable, even pretty fun horror flick. There’s really no reason any genre movie should surpass 90 minutes, and it’s particularly problematic here because the self-importance behind the unconscionable length is palpable. You’ll spend most of the movie earmarking the sequences that could’ve been eliminated wholesale without any effect on the finished product. It’s nothing more than another movie in which characters wander around a dark house and wait to be consumed by a thunderous foley effect.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy is in cinemas nationwide.

source https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/lee-cronin-the-mummy-review