“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” Has No Thrills Under its Wrapping
Universal Pictures has been trying to get into the cinematic universe game for a few years now. After the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems like every studio has been looking for its own “universe.” Interestingly, though, despite the fact that it’s a reimagination of The Mummy franchise, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, is not at all connected to the Universal series. Including the director’s name in the title was supposed to create separation between the two, but that didn’t stop Blumhouse’s social media team from obsessively tweeting “BRENDAN FRASER IS NOT IN LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY” for days on end. So if Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has nothing to do with the larger Mummy universe, what’s the goal here? According to Cronin, it was to make a terrifying Mummy movie. Did he succeed?
Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Charlie Cannon’s (Jack Reynor) career as a journalist has taken his family to Cairo, Egypt. His wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), works as a nurse in a hospital. Their two children, Katie (Emily Mitchel and Natalie Grace) and Sebastián (Dean Allen Williams and Shylo Molina), have gotten used to life in Cairo, but often miss being close to their grandmother (Verónica Falcón) in the United States. Luckily for them, their time in Egypt is limited, as Charlie gets word that he has a job opportunity in New York City. The excitement is sidelined when Katie goes missing. Cairo police have no leads until eight years later, when Katie is found inside a sarcophagus. At first, the Cannon family is overjoyed, but upon seeing Katie in this catatonic state, they begin to worry that there’s something seriously wrong with her.
One of the issues of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is that its characters spend the entire movie making a series of increasingly idiotic choices regarding Katie. The doctors in Egypt tell them she’s locked inside her body because of the immense trauma she went through. Understandable, but these parents ask no follow-ups. Why is she covered in a strange second skin? Is it safe to remove her from medical care? Is it safe to transport her from Egypt to Arizona and introduce her to a household with an older woman and young children? Yes, it’s understandable these parents would feel immense relief that their child has returned, but within minutes of Katie getting home she’s brutally attacked by her grandmother. It’s the sort of silly decision making that pulls the audience right out of the film. A certain suspension of disbelief is required for most horror movies, but the choices coming from these parents are hard to understand.
Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Cronin gained name recognition for his work on Evil Dead Rise, a 2023 film that, by all accounts, revitalized the Evil Dead universe. He turned down making the sequel to that film in favor of taking on The Mummy. Fans of Cronin’s work in Evil Dead Rise have pointed out that his take on The Mummy feels much more like it belongs in the Evil Dead universe rather than that of an ancient Egyptian entity. Early reactions called Lee Cronin’s The Mummy unrelentingly mean, but because the beats of the film are so guessable, nothing in the movie feels particularly new or mean-spirited. Sure, some of the specifics are new, but the general idea of a child possessed by something and wreaking havoc on a family is not new. We’ve seen these catatonic evil children before, and simply loosely tying it to Egyptian history is not enough to make it rise to the top of this subgenre.
When a horror movie is described as relentlessly mean, something like Talk to Me comes to mind, or even the SXSW-premiering Drag. Those films have moments of levity, but they also end on a bleak note that is the final nail in the coffin of the uncomfortable starkness of what came before. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy lacks that bite in its evil entity, and if the film isn’t fueled by a millennia-long sense of ire, there’s not much that separates it from the standard horror of a popcorn flick.
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