I would not consider myself an authority on the Evil Dead franchise, since I have not seen the entire thing. I have yet to find the first two films with audio description, so prior to Evil Dead Rise, I had only seen Army of Darkness and the 2013 Evil Dead remake. But I really liked Evil Dead Rise, so Lee Cronin found a fan in me. The way he balanced comedy and horror simultaneously was fascinating. He made a film that was funny and scary, incredibly gory and yet somehow completely captivating. So when Lee Cronin’s The Mummy came out, I thought, well, that’s audacious. He’s putting his name in front of a movie already, despite only having a handful of features to his name. I believe this is just his third film, so it almost feels like he’s trying to take the Ari Aster route to instant auteur status. Then again, even Ari Aster hasn’t put his name in front of one of his movies. Maybe that’s because we already have multiple Mummy franchises and he wanted to distinguish his film. It also probably doesn’t hurt that Warner Bros. released this one while The Mummy is so heavily associated with Universal’s classic movie monster. Copyright has a funny way of complicating even the simplest titles.
It reminded me of Lee Daniels’ The Butler. I remember reading that Lee Daniels had to put his name in front of that movie because of a copyright dispute over the title The Butler. That always struck me as bizarre because it’s such a basic title, especially when there are countless unrelated movies that happen to share the same name. Still, I can understand why Universal might raise an eyebrow at another studio releasing a movie simply called The Mummy. Whether putting Lee Cronin’s name in front of it helps his career, though, is another matter entirely. Unfortunately, I don’t think this movie is good enough for that distinction to really matter.
The film basically takes everything people told Lee Cronin worked about Evil Dead Rise and tries to recreate it, only this time it never quite figures out what kind of horror movie it wants to be. Is it supposed to be a monster movie centered around a mummy, or is it really another possession story wearing mummy bandages? The plot follows an American family living in Egypt whose young daughter mysteriously disappears after being lured away by a strange woman offering her candy. Egyptian authorities never find her, and years later the shattered family has returned to the United States, trying to move on with their lives. The parents now have their teenage son, a younger daughter, and Grandma living with them when they receive unbelievable news that their missing daughter has finally been found.
That discovery comes in one of the film’s more memorable and gruesome sequences, involving a plane crash that scatters its cargo across the landscape. Inside one of the wrecked sarcophagi is their missing daughter, somehow still alive after all these years and wrapped like an ancient mummy. Naturally, everyone assumes she was the victim of human trafficking or some other horrific crime. The truth, however, is far stranger, as she has become the vessel for an ancient Egyptian spirit thousands of years old. The audience realizes almost immediately that something is deeply wrong with her, long before the family is willing to admit it.
As any horror fan would expect, things eventually spiral out of control. What surprised me was just how restrained Lee Cronin becomes. Considering how absolutely bonkers he was willing to get with Evil Dead Rise, this feels strangely tame. The body count is remarkably low for a movie with this much potential to wipe out its cast. Our possessed mummy returns home to Mom, Dad, her two siblings, and Grandma, and most of them actually survive. Even supporting characters, like the professor helping translate ancient Egyptian texts and the Egyptian police officer investigating the original disappearance, largely escape unscathed. This is the same filmmaker who practically tried to massacre an entire apartment building in Evil Dead Rise, yet here he suddenly seems emotionally attached to nearly everyone on screen.
I wrestled with my score for much of the movie because there are moments where the horror works, even if the comedy is dialed back considerably compared to Evil Dead Rise. What ultimately pushed me into Rotten territory was the ending. Lee Cronin arrives at a conclusion that’s reasonably interesting, then almost immediately backs away from it. Instead, he chooses to wrap everything up with a neat little bow, either because he knew there would never be a sequel or because he wanted audiences leaving with warm feelings despite spending two hours watching a horror movie. The final few minutes completely lost me. There’s a sacrifice that carries genuine emotional weight, only for the movie to undermine it with a coda that exists mostly to give one character a little extra comeuppance. There were far more effective ways to accomplish that without undoing what had already worked. Nothing about the filmmaker behind Evil Dead Rise made me expect a feel-good ending, so this decision felt completely out of step with the rest of his work.
I’m glad I waited until streaming instead of seeing this in theaters because I probably would have been even more disappointed after buying a ticket. Yes, there is gore. Lee Cronin certainly hasn’t forgotten that horror fans like body mutilation. The problem is that because so many characters survive, there’s only so much carnage to go around. One unfortunate character absorbs the overwhelming majority of the punishment while everyone else spends most of the movie narrowly avoiding the same fate.
The audio description was solid and did a good job conveying many of the unsettling moments, especially involving the daughter’s increasingly disturbing behavior. She’s so obviously not okay that it almost becomes distracting watching everyone around her continually convince themselves she’s simply dealing with years of unimaginable trauma. I understand why her family desperately wants to believe she’s really come home, but it stretches credibility just how long they ignore the supernatural warning signs.
Either way, I couldn’t find the best in The Mummy, or should I say, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. The Brendan Fraser version is still the Mummy movie I’d happily revisit. Lee Cronin’s take lacks the same thrills, chills, and gleeful insanity that made Evil Dead Rise such a blast. Instead, it leaves you feeling wrapped up in the cold, much like its titular monster, slowly wasting away in the sands of time.
Rotten: 5.5/10
