A lot of fun has been had at the expense of director Lee Cronin for the presence of his name in the title of his third (yes, only third) feature film. It started as “who does he think he is? Kubrick didn’t even do that,” to “well, now we know who is getting most of the blame for this.”
You see, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has been something of a chore to make. But to make things worse, before it even came out, there was the announcement that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz would be returning to the juggernaut franchise version of The Mummy that is easily the most popular version of the story. Sorry Boris Karloff fans, it can’t be denied. This meant that Blumhouse feared that the normal everyday filmgoer, someone who is more likely to turn up for a Fraser/Weisz action horror sequel, needed something to differentiate it from that rather more enticing option. Now that I’ve watched Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, I think they should have just tricked people.
I am a huge fan of Cronin’s previous films, The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise, so I was more enthusiastic than most for him taking a shot at updating an old Universal monster. Instead of a tense, gory, emotional family horror, you know, the very thing that got him the job, Cronin’s Mummy is so much of a slog that I needed two goes to finish it. Not because it was so violent, shocking, or boundary-pushing, it is because it was so damn boring.
Jack Reynor and Laia Costa (two great actors giving career-low performances) play a couple whose daughter was abducted in Egypt, only for her to return years later marginally worse for wear, by which I mean, lightly mummified. What follows is a needless re-tread of every possession film you’ve ever seen but with none of the atmosphere or scares. The mummy as a villain in horror fiction is one that offers an outside threat to fight off, but Cronin dobs that in for a far more generic take. Much like Wolfman, The Mummy has been retrofitted into a family trauma horror and what it proves more than anything else is that this genre is becoming increasingly played out.
Perhaps this flaw could have been salved if The Mummy wasn’t so crushingly dull and uninspired in its approach to this particular subgenre- Cronin heaves his way through every trope in this genre, stretching them thin over a two-hour-plus runtime that renders even the brief effective moments afloat in a sea of nothingness. The film’s relentless misery strips the update of any potential, a trudge through misery so endless it becomes rather boring after a while, and it’s hard to believe I’m saying that about someone who made an entry into one of the most raucously fun horror franchises of all time.
While it has, quite hilariously been a box office hit – the small budget Blumhouse model is still a winner after all these years – a decent box office return is not enough to polish this turd. I am a fan of literally everyone involved here, but that cannot stop it from being my worst film of the year so far.
Thus ends Kevin Boyle’s Lee Cronin’s The Mummy review.
(header image by LA Times)
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