Lee Cronin's The Mummy Review: Boring Horror

This Mummy is all sound and fury, signifying nothing, discovers Mayur Sanap.

A question for you: Don't you hate it when your brain starts writing a better script than the one you are watching? You are sitting there, imagining clever twists, bold turns, and the film just seems determined to give you the most generic version possible.

That pretty much sums up The Mummy.

Now, this is not the Mummy film we once knew.

There's no Indiana Jones-style fun ride through sand dunes, or there are no Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in sight with their flirtatious banter (not nudging the Tom Cruise one, let's just pretend that doesn't exist).

This film is a grim, straight-faced horror piece from Writer-Director Lee Cronin, who previously made Evil Dead Rise, which was a big success in India. The Mummy even wears his name on the title, like a badge of honour.

And from what we saw in Cronin's last film, this one packs all his signatures with the body horror, gore, and how-far-can-we-push-this moments in its quest to disgust you.

The Mummy is obsessed with gore, vomit, shock value, but forgets that fear works best when you have a solid plot holding it all together. The result is a boring spectacle from a capable director that has nothing new to offer.

What's The Mummy About?

You can see shades of Cronin's debut horror The Hole In The Ground, where a child returns home possessed after a brief disappearance into the woods.

Here, we have a teenage girl as the central Mummy figure, but it plays out like a loud, overlong demon possession film, more in the lane of The Exorcist than The Mummy.

An expat journalist's daughter Katie is abducted in Cairo. The parents (played by Laia Costa and Jack Reynor) get no help from the Egyptian authorities. They eventually move out of the country and try to move on.

Eight years later, the couple is told that Katie has been found. She is brought home in a frail state, with assurances that 'care and love' will help her recover.

As expected, that doesn't happen.

The film then becomes a quick checklist of horror cliches: Lights flicker, strange noises are heard in basements, characters make baffling decisions, and a string of jumpscares for spooky effect as Katie terrorises her family.

The Mummy Squanders Its Potential

The first half actually shows promise with its build-up, as you keep wondering why an expat's child is chosen, whether there's a larger conspiracy at play, or if a satanic cult is lurking in there, or if the family is hiding a turbulent past. But then, the film gives up and settles into a straight-forward demon possession film we have seen countless times before.

There's also this classic Hollywood touch, the sepia filter! Because apparently, every scene set in Egypt must have grainy, yellow-y hues, as if that's the only visual language for non-Western regions.

The film throws at us exposition about how this Egyptian evil predates Jesus by thousands of years. So when the religious granny character confidently brings out a Cross against the possessed child, she is put down to brutal death.

It's hard to tell if it's horror or a dark comedy at this point.

Then there's the dialogue. Imagine trying to fear a demon that says, 'You used to be her dad, I'm her daddy now.' Quite cool for an ancient demon to pick up Gen Z lingo.

The Mummy has a few bright spots. There's an interesting choice to stage many horror scenes in broad daylight instead of darkness. This could have been refreshing but the tension in these scenes just doesn't land. The makeup and effects on Katie are also impressive, and you can only imagine the hours the young actor Natalie Grace spent in the chair.

As for acting, the performances here are just serviceable, because there's no real emotional undercurrent to carry it. The characters appear, disappear, and act strangely, and yet nobody seems particularly bothered by any of it.

The so-called emotional thread holding the plot together is so dull and the characters so flat that I actually found myself missing the over-the-top drama of Vikram Bhatt's horror films, which somehow feel far more engaging in comparison.

Also, what's with horror film characters always moving into isolated houses? It's like they are actively inviting trouble.

This Mummy eventually ends up as sound and fury, signifying nothing. If there's any comfort, it's the hope of a possible reunion for Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in a new reboot. I'd certainly watch that Mummy.

As for Lee Cronin's The Mummy, let the dead stay dead.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Review Rediff Rating: