Directed by Lee Cronin, The Mummy follows a journalist’s daughter who returns after being missing for eight years in the desert, having been sealed inside a sarcophagus. However, she is not the same child as she brings a terrifying, ancient, and malevolent force into the family home that turns what should be a joyful reunion into a living nightmare.
Amongst all the Universal Monster franchises, The Mummy series has had one of the most interesting legacies, having begun with the 1932 classic film starring Boris Karloff, to becoming a pop culture sensation in 1999 & 2001 with the Brendan Fraser films, to getting buried with the 2017 reboot / failed shared universe starter film starring Tom Cruise. But now, after nine long years, a new Mummy film has arisen from director Lee Cronin, who brings forth a supernatural horror reimagining of the Mummy that is an intimate battle for survival, focused on a family and their mummified daughter rather than another adventure film focused on a cursed mummified Egyptian like the last several films. This was a bold and creative direction for Lee Cronin to take for the series, but I was honestly very open to it for how unique it was and the fact that I loved what Lee Cronin’s previous work with Evil Dead Rise. So did this reimagining live up to expectations? Unfortunately for me it did not.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy had a lot of great ideas and great effort put into it that all felt sadly wasted due to poor execution and other elements holding it back from its full potential. This film doesn’t even feel like a true cursed Mummy film and felt more like Evil Dead Rise with a Mummy skin, having multiple similarities with that film with only a few key differences to make it stand out. I really wanted to love this film, especially given the great effort that was clearly put into making it by everyone involved, but I ended up feeling largely disappointed with the end result due to multiple factors.
The majority of the cast all deliver awesome performances, with several of them being major standouts, including the titular Mummy herself Katie Cannon, played by Natalie Grace in her first ever role. It’s not often you see child actors or actresses do a good job for a major horror role on their first ever film but Natalie Grace absolutely nailed it as the Mummy, delivering a truly terrifying and memorable performance that really gets under your skin every time she’s on screen. Even with very little dialogue she managed to deliver phenomenal physical acting under heavy prosthetics that managed to deliver fun and creepy horror moments that I enjoyed.
That being said, I wasn’t a fan of the revelation about how she became a Mummy due to it feeling a lot like Evil Dead, and her “powers” make little to no sense based on the explanation we were given. At least with the previous Mummy films, the powers had a logical explanation behind them that didn’t require too much exposition and made a lot of sense based on Egyptian mythology.
When it comes to Katie’s family, all of them put forth great effort in their performances, except one that stood out as the worst among them, and that was Jack Reynor as the father Charlie Cannon. Jack Reynor has delivered amazing performances in the past, with his most notable role as Christian in Midsommar, so I was absolutely stunned to see him deliver such a bland and terrible performance in this film when he plays a crucial character to the story. With the writing this character is given I was expecting a Hugh Jackman Prisoners level performance, but instead we get a wide-eyed, blank-faced, emotionless man throughout the whole film. Even in scenes where you’d think he should be crying or having a face of pure horror, he instead continues to have this emotionless reaction to everything that felt almost comical when it shouldn’t in scenes of pure horror.
I expected a lot better from Jack Reynor, especially when the rest of the family cast puts forth more effort and emotion, including Laia Costa as Larissa Cannon, Shylo Molina as Sebastián Cannon, and Verónica Falcón as Carmen Santiago, Larissa’s mother, and by far the funniest character in the film that offers some levity in such a dark film.
While the family is the main focus, this film does feature an incredible Egyptian cast and dedication to proper representation of Egyptian culture and language through this cast, even if it’s in supporting roles. The strongest performance among them comes from May Calamawy as Detective Dalia Zaki, a detective who investigates Katie’s reappearance, and probably my favorite character in the film. She may be playing the typical detective role we have seen in most supernatural horrors but she’s given a lot to do to make her stand out from others, and May brings a lot of heart, soul, and badass energy to this role that you can’t help but truly root for her. In all honesty, I would have preferred her to be the leading role of this film over the family because of how interesting her character was.
There was also another interesting character played by Hayat Kamille, who is simply known in the film as “the Magician” that I would have loved to see more of due to her crucial role in the film’s story, yet she seemed to be extremely sidelined for most of it. A really interesting dynamic between this character and Detective Dalia could have been formed had they been more of the focus.
The film’s narrative is certainly miles better compared to the 2017 Tom Cruise film as it manages to have a lot more compelling elements and some creative ideas for a Mummy film. Unfortunately, the execution of these elements and ideas didn’t really work for me because a majority of the story felt like a copy and paste of Evil Dead Rise with a Mummy skin on it and felt significantly weaker in comparison. The two stories share a lot in common, from the family-focused narrative to the demonic entity possession elements that to me shouldn’t be part of a Mummy film when the Mummy itself is a creature of its own without the need of demonic possession. Despite some moments of solid heart, humor, creative spins, and entertaining amounts of graphic horror, I was expecting something way more unique and impactful than what we got.
It also felt very predictable and painfully slow in some parts, which made it hard to enjoy all the insane sequences later in the film that normally I’d find hugely enjoyable. I also found the ending to be a bit too safe, which was a bit of surprise, given how bold Evil Dead Rise was with its stakes and willingness to kill off characters you’d think would survive till the very end. Overall, the narrative just wasn’t as strong as I hoped for, despite some clever ideas being used.
From a technical perspective, the film looks and sounds great thanks to fantastic cinematography as well as stellar editing that amplifies the horror in great ways, even if the narrative wasn’t that strong. Additionally, the practical effects and sets look absolutely amazing throughout the whole film, with the gore being viciously unhinged and certainly not for the faint-hearted. However, some of the horror sequences do get negatively affected by small moments of rough CGI that really didn’t need to be there and felt lazily tacked on for some scenes that could have been achieved practically.
Further elevating the horror is an excellent score by composer Stephen McKeon that assaults the senses and really absorbs you into the creepy moments that happen on screen.
This film had a lot of potential to be a phenomenal reimagining of The Mummy on paper but was unfortunately executed poorly in its narrative and does very little to stand out from the director’s previous work, as well as other possession-themed films. This film clearly had great effort put into it by the cast and crew under Lee Cronin’s direction that deserves praise, but it’s just not enough to save this film from being a major disappointment to me after eagerly awaiting something unique and impactful for the Mummy series after so many years. I’m going to give Lee Cronin’s The Mummy a C = 76.
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