There’s always room in my heart for another creepy killer kid flick but LEE CRONIN'S THE MUMMY had me scratching my head so much you’d think a scarab crawled under my hat. There are some rich, intriguing elements dealing with the dread, repulsion and guilt that accompany the caretaking of a sick loved one yet much of it unravels when faced with even the slightest scrutiny and baffling character behavior reigns. For the most part, I have no idea why this movie insists on presenting itself as a mummy movie when mummies seem to be the furthest thing on its mind. Sure, there’s some Egyptian curses involved and a sarcophagus nearly lands on someone’s head but they mostly come off as decorative quota fillers. Spiritually, this movie has much more in common with Stephen King's PET SEMATARY and its too bad they didn’t just go with another title (THE RETURNED, THE CURSED, THE TAKEN etc.) to avoid expectations.
Cronin’s movie is really about a grieving family who lose their child to a kidnapper, get her back eight years later and then find out maybe they’d all be better off if she had stayed lost (much like his earlier work A HOLE IN THE GROUND (2019)). The child in question evokes much of the same type of discomfort as PET SEMATARY’s kindertrauma legend “Zelda” in that she’s creepy as hell and inspires extreme emotions ranging from absolute revulsion to cautious compassion and then back to pure nausea again. There’s a lot of body horror involved and like David Cronenberg’s THE FLY (’86), it raises the question of how long you can keep loving someone that is changing into something else. The atmosphere of sickness and death is palpable but thankfully Cronin injects enough morbid black humor to keep things from becoming too dire. It’s a rough ride though, especially for anyone who has had to deal with an ailing loved one before.
MIDSOMMAR’s Jack Reynor does an excellent job portraying the father but at the end of the day his biggest obstacle is the script rather than his seemingly possessed child. Every possible bad decision seems to be made by the characters and its almost like they’re all suffering from collective amnesia. I don’t even understand how the child Katie (Natalie Grace) is even allowed out of the hospital looking and acting like she does. I know the state of health care in America is dismal but Katie surely required a bit more healing before discharge. The doctors don’t even bother to clip her twisted toenails which leads to a very effective and yet very illogical scene. All I can do is recommend that you chalk up the slew of inconsistencies as “nightmare logic” and try not to think about how so little of the film makes sense or why nobody behaves in a way that resembles reality as we know it.
Maybe I was just lucky enough to see LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY with a game, lively audience but I rather enjoyed it even while marveling at the quantity of incongruities it shovels. Flaws aside, It’s got more than a few memorably gruesome set pieces, the mood is genuinely unnerving and the performances are above standard. I really dig Cronin’s style and wicked morbidness but someone might suggest to him there’s no shame in dialing up a script doctor. If you enjoyed EVIL DEAD RISE (2023) this is not much of a drop off and could have been something really special if they skipped the unnecessary globetrotting and kept the mummy angle under wraps.
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