‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ movie review: Jack Reynor and Laia Costa grapple with ancient evil and Grand Guignol Gore in a visceral family nightmare

Irish director Lee Cronin is keen on exploiting parental fears The hole in the ground and Rising Evil Dead. It doubles down on this objective horror element in its powerful reimagining The mummyobsessed madly about a family naively convinced that the reassuring comforts of home can fix their unruly, violent daughter who has been lost to them for eight years. At least until all hell breaks loose in an action movie that revels in its relentless filth. He thinks The exorcist meet Hereditary And you are on the right track.

Does Cronin’s film have the sharp narrative lines or control of those that came before it? It’s not even close, but it has enough style, scares, breathless energy and even diabolical humor to justify the director’s name being lavishly included in the title. In fact this was a marketing decision to differentiate the film from the Universal Classic Monsters as well as the emphasis on adventure, action and romance of the recent reboots. Besides, a little branding from a rising star horror auteur isn’t a bad thing, especially one who’s been welcomed into the fold of producers James Wan and Jason Blum.

An introduction in Arabic deftly places a secondary family at the foundation of the story on the outskirts of Cairo. A cheerful father and his three children are singing loudly to the car radio when the witch mother (Hayat Camille) driving the car, who later introduces herself as a “witch,” suddenly turns it off and tells them they are giving her a headache. Her mood sours further when they arrive home at their nectarine farm near an oasis and find their pet canary half-dead in a pool of inky blood. This is what prompted the family to inspect the old basalt coffin located in the archaeological room under the house.

The artifact’s hold on the family and the duties they must perform to keep its evil spirit quiet are explained later, long after the wizard sparks a secret friendship with 8-year-old American Katie Cannon (Emily Mitchell) while she is playing in a hidden corner of her garden. Katie’s father, Charlie (Jack Reynor), is a television news reporter; By the time he got out to check on her, Katie was gone. The police, including English-speaking rookie detective Dalia Zaki (May Callimaoui), come up with nothing.

Eight years later, when the American family — including Katie’s mother Larissa (Laia Costa), her younger brother Sebastian (Shilo Molina) and her unborn sister at the time of the kidnapping, Maude (Billy Roy) — left Egypt and returned to Albuquerque to live with Larissa’s Mexican-American mother Carmen (Veronica Falcon).

Even early on, before the atrocities begin to spiral out of control, Stephen McKeon’s stabbing score, its disturbing score, and Peter Albrechtsen’s evocative soundscape work to tickle our nerves overtime. Self-control is not a quality that comes to Cronin’s mind.

A plot twist sees a small plane landing in Egypt and a cyclist wanders through the wreckage to find the crew members dead and seriously mutilated. (That tree branches through the eye, oh.) But standing intact is a familiar coffin, which should never have been moved.

Egyptian authorities contact Charlie and Larissa to inform them that their daughter has been found. Unraveled from sticky bandages covered in centuries-old hieratic writing, Katie (played with devilish eccentricity by 16-year-old Natalie Grace) appears more dead than alive. But her vital organs are strong and there is amazing power in her unpredictable spasms and bone-chilling sounds. With her gnarled hands and feet, her sick skin tone, her withered face, and her wonky eyes, she’s the ultimate nerdy teenage girl. The accuracy of her head strikes poses a risk of concussion.

When the Cannon family places their unresponsive daughter in a wheelchair and takes her back to New Mexico—an area surrounded by desert not unlike the Egyptian ranch from the beginning; Exterior locations were filmed in Almeria, Spain, Once Upon a Time in the West Country – She was quiet for a minute until Grandma made the mistake of praying over her. (It never hurts to throw a little Catholicism into the mix, but be careful with those rosary beads, Abuelita.) Larissa’s pedicure attempt couldn’t have been any better. Maud is curious but wary of the older sister she’s never met, while Seb keeps a disgusting distance.

There are nods to Linda Blair’s Reagan in the slurry vomit pouring out of Katie, as well as animalistic running, physical contortions and flight. She begins to enter the crawl space in the walls of the old house, echoing her powerful movements through the rooms and terrifying the children. After watching her swallow a live scorpion, Charlie was the first to suggest that they might need to move her to a place better equipped to care for her. But Larissa, a nurse who is always on standby with a syringe full of sedatives, is inflexible about Katie staying home.

Consulting with an archaeologist (Mark Mitchinson, Giving Good Donald Pleasence) reveals the presence of a malevolent spirit called the Nazmaranian, a shadow that moves among the living, known as the “Destroyer of the Family” and believed to have been contained long ago. Not that we really need to put a name to it when Katie messes with the heads of the family and turns them into diabolical accomplices. It also seemed that she had help from four snarling gray wolves at the gates, thirsty for blood and courage.

Meanwhile, back in Egypt, Det. Zaki comes across some illuminating evidence which she travels to the United States to share with the Cannon family. This leaves another person brutalized after learning the hard way to never take a mummy to a wake.

Cronin’s threshold for disgusting developments will challenge easily shocked audiences, but his skill at evoking a crescendo of horror helps distract from a plot that has very little connecting thread between the big performances. The sinister climax at home, involving the ultimate parental sacrifice, segues into an ending in Egypt, where all the threads tie together satisfyingly.

Collaborating with DP Dave Garbett who brought rich, grungy textures, frenetic action, unstable angles and disorienting split diopter shots to The evil dead rises It pays off with similar visual intensity here. Even if it’s long—frequently concerned with the over-the-top and favoring maddening action, body horror, and unbridled gore over character engagement or clarity of storytelling—it’s a remarkably engaging and sustained entertainment that offers a fresh take on the Mummy legend.