Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Following their bold, contemporary remixes of The Invisible Man and Wolf Man, another classic-horror icon receives the Blumhouse treatment. Although, as the title makes clear, it’s Irish writer-director Lee Cronin (Evil Dead Rise) rather than BH regular Leigh Whannell doing the honours. Still, anyone who enjoyed both those movies is unlikely to be disappointed by Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, as it follows the same “tweak, inject a shot of modern relevance, and amp up the scares” approach. With the caveat that Cronin’s inspirations seem to lie mostly outside the Mummy mythos, and take him into some questionable territory.

Similar to his 2019 debut The Hole In The Ground, this story revolves around the disappearance of a child — in this case young Katie Cannon (Emily Mitchell) — who later reappears and returns home in a creepily changed form (Natalie Grace). Here the transformation is far less subtle: Katie has spent eight years in an Egyptian tomb wrapped in bandages, and has re-emerged scarred and virtually catatonic, with long, horny finger- and toe-nails, looking very similar to a peat-bog person thanks to some impressive make-up work.

As you might imagine, Katie’s reintegration into her Albuquerque-based family (dad Jack Reynor, mum Laia Costa, younger siblings Shylo Molina and Billie Roy, sassy granny Veronica Falcón) is painful and distressing. So this ‘Mummy’ is no reanimated ancient priest stalking ruins and museums like Christopher Lee or Arnold Vosloo. This is an apparently vulnerable young woman requiring around-the-clock home-care from her traumatised and increasingly fractious loved ones, who ultimately suffer from monstrous domestic antics that feel closer to The Exorcist than anything involving bandaged stalkers.

Add in some queasily effective body-horror scenes (the nail-cutting sequence is a nasty doozy), and this makes for some uncomfortable viewing that might not be to everyone’s taste. With the extra wrinkle that Katie’s abduction and corruption are inflicted by predatory foreigners, whose retrograde othering is only marginally mitigated by the inclusion of a heroic Egyptian cop played by Moon Knight’s May Calamawy.

At the same time, Cronin’s darkly humorous tone (which peaks with one glorious C-bomb) and sudden-volume-cranking jump-scare style urge us not to take things too seriously. Indeed, as the chez Cannon situation spirals into a grand guignol blowout, the whole thing turns very Evil Dead. By this point it feels like Cronin wants to hit as many genre hallmarks as possible on this (slightly overlong) descent, which should keep the most committed horror-hounds happy, at least. Although the sticklers among them will surely agree that his Mummy isn’t really a mummy movie.