New Version Of The Mummy Is Bad Parenting Wrapped In Vomit-Soaked Blasphemy

By Chris Sawin
| Published 28 seconds ago

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is not a remake of the 1999 version of The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser, but actually a reimagining of the 1932 film starring Boris Karloff. What’s interesting about the original 1932 version of The Mummy is that it was also reimagined for its four sequels, including a crossover with Abbott and Costello.

The new horror film is loaded with gross-out gore, extreme close-up shots, and is undeniably corny even when tension is meant to be high. The Cannon family is annoying as hell. Charlie (Jack Reynor, Midsommar) is a terrible parent. Katie (Natalie Grace) is abducted because he wasn’t watching her at the beginning of the film, and things get increasingly worse because he’s constantly off being dumb in the basement.

His wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), is a delusional twit. When things get bad, and Katie starts eating live scorpions, headbutting her grandmother in the face, breaking her nose, and having half of her leg ripped off because Larissa doesn’t know how to do a proper pedicure, Charlie gives her an out, stating, “Hey, maybe we should have Katie committed somewhere temporarily because we have no idea what the hell we’re doing, and your mom’s face can only take so much punishment.” Larissa takes it personally and thinks Charlie is implying that she can’t take care of her own daughter. He is, and she can’t.

The Cannons are living in this two-story, creaky-ass house with the loudest floorboards known to man. It also has this insane crawlspace with tiny doors leading to every room in the house, which is more convenient than Jason Voorhees digging tunnels to reach every room in the 2009 Friday the 13th remake. They also live with Carmen Santiago (Veronica Falcon), who is Larissa’s mother. Lee Cronin must have a thing against old people and/or grandparents, because this lady is destroyed throughout the film. Those coyotes that have been lurking around the house are eventually put to good use.

Parenting Is Never Easy

Somewhere in Egypt, a family is riding together in their car. The father sings with his three children as the mother quickly turns off the radio and complains that they’re all giving her a headache, then continues the car ride in silence. When they arrive home, their pet bird is left twitching in its cage in a pool of its own blood. The mother grabs the bird in her hand, blood dripping down her arm, and crushes it to death in front of her family.

The parents make their way to their basement, where they’ve been housing a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. They decide to crack it open and see if the mummy inside has awoken. As the sarcophagus becomes ajar, their torch is blown out, and a hook lifts the father off his feet, pierces through his jaw, and leaves him dangling in the air while choking on his last blood-soaked breath.

American Charlie Cannon has been working in Cairo as a reporter while trying to get a promotion in New York. As he secures his promotion, his daughter, Katie, disappears. She has been visiting a secret friend at the end of their garden for some time now, a woman who claims to be a magician (the mother from the beginning of the film). The magician (Hayat Kamille) kidnaps Katie, and the Cannon family is never the same.

Eight years later, a plane carrying the sarcophagus crashes. When it’s opened by the authorities, Katie is found inside, totally emaciated and wrapped up like a mummy. The rest of the film is spent trying to figure out what happened to her.

A Smell Only A Mother Can Love

What Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has going for it, other than its long-ass name, is that it is ridiculous. The dialogue reads like a bad soap opera, with Charlie being a mega-macho a-hole for no reason, and any sort of human interaction not feeling genuine in the slightest. The film is loaded with projectile vomit, and whatever is going on with Katie can’t decide whether it wants to blatantly rip off The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, or Poltergeist.

Charlie goes jogging out into a sandstorm to search for Katie after she disappears, and is barely fazed by the disastrous natural phenomenon. Katie violently and repeatedly shoves a fireplace poker into her foot after her mother’s attempt at cutting her toenails. Katie is also catatonic throughout most of the film. She breathes these raspy death rattle breaths, chomps her teeth, and gurgles these inhuman noises. She’s violent, unpredictable, with stinky, dried-out skin and long, black Frito fingernails, and can’t move on her own unless it’s convenient to the over-complicated story. She has a face, an appearance, and a smell only a mother can love, apparently.

Before Katie disappeared, the Cannons were expecting another baby. When Katie returns, she has a sister named Maud (Billie Roy). Maud starts off as this kind of cute, harmless kid who turns into an absolute hellion. What she does with teeth is disgusting. The funeral reception sequence, which is where Maud’s tooth obsession culminates, may be the most nauseating and outrageous scene in the film.

Evil Dead Rise was written and directed by Lee Cronin in 2023. His experience of dabbling in a Sam Raimi-created franchise must have left its mark because Lee Cronin’s The Mummy remorsely borrows from Raimi’s work at every opportunity. The film is over two hours long and would be nothing without its reliance on nasty gore. The musical score sounds like a herd of stampeding elephants and viciously assaults your eardrums constantly.

Miserable And Excessive

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy isn’t scary or memorable; it’s raunchy exploitation and over-orchestrated expired cheese. It is a horror film that reeks of nothing but ridiculousness. The sad part is there’s a decent enough concept buried somewhere within this vomit-drenched monstrosity and a killer ambiance that is borderline spine-tingling.

But there’s nothing original here other than influence overkill. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is like dunking a grenade in a bucket of gasoline, throwing that grenade in a clown car, and witnessing an entire circus melt, crackle, and explode as you try to piss to put it out. It is miserably and excessively grotesque.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy barfs its way into theaters on April 17.