LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY
Lee Cronin made waves in the horror genre with his exciting take on Evil Dead Rise. Now he’s back in vicious territory with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. Notice the name drop to not compare it to the Universal monster movie, Brendan Fraser’s franchise, or that Tom Cruise dud. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is releasing it on physical media for you to add to your library on July 14th. Let’s dive in!
Jack Reynor grounds the film as Charlie Cannon, an American journalist living in Cairo, Egypt with his wife and two children. They’re expecting another baby along the way. His daughter, Katie, loves playing out in their garden frequently taking treats from a mysterious woman who pops by. One afternoon she’s kidnapped, and Charlie can’t rescue her fast enough before she disappears for good. The family movies to New Mexico, and eight years later, they get that hopeful call that Katie has been found. A plane crashes carrying a sarcophagus and inside lays a catatonic Katie. The family is reunited and there starts an investigation into what happened to Katie, and the truth is stranger than fiction leading to a horrifying discovery.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a puzzling film. There’s a good movie in there but it got bogged down by too many ideas. It then runs 2 hours 15 minutes which is too long for a movie like this. Cronin seems to be making an Exorcist movie and an Evil Dead movie by way of Dan Brown story. None of this adds up to anything that feels wholly original but rather just leaning into grotesque shock value. Cronin is tapping into language here, as Charlie and Katie often talk in morse code. Katie is also found in wrappings covered in hieroglyphics. He’s tapping into morse and ancient languages as a way of uncovering the truth about what happened. That would be a unique angle, but it’s short changed by leaning into possession scares and gross out blood effects. You can see where this story is going…and going…and going. It’s almost like Cronin would rather just lean into easy scary tactics than the storytelling and mystery that starts this whole film.
SPECIAL FEATURES
-Commentary by Director Lee Cronin
-The Making of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
-A Bloody and Grostesque Spectacle
-Producing Possession and Ancient Demons
-Deleted Scences
There are some fun behind-the-scenes features that dive into the practical effects and special effects it takes to pull off Katie’s possession.
Here’s a video I made for TikTok
