Notable Cast: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy,
Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy, Veronica Falcon, Hayat Kamille, May
Elghety
When it was initially announced that Lee Cronin’s follow-up
to Evil Dead Rise would be a new version of The Mummy, I was kind
of stoked. His first film, Hole in the Ground, was a fantastic,
character-driven, atmospheric horror film about loss, so combining his talents
for scares and atmosphere could prove valuable for an update of The Mummy.
Of course, if he were the one to be part of Universal’s updates on the classic
monster series, then the film would have to be from, you know, Universal, and Lee
Cronin's The Mummy was slated by New Line Cinema.
Huh. This would not be an update of that series, I
guess.
Nonetheless, he’s a talented director; the film still
managed to find backing from Jason Blum and James Wan as producers (like
Universal’s other reboots of The Invisible Man and Wolf Man), and
for that alone, it was worth taking a gander. I’m a sucker for seeing a new
adaptation of classic stories and genres.
However, Lee Cronin's The Mummy is not the film one
might expect, particularly with its marketing. Instead of going for the
traditional Mummy movie narrative where someone fucks with a sarcophagus
or tomb and a mummy, in some form, pops up to get revenge for their arrogance -
and if we’re lucky there might be a sweet love story somewhere in there
inspired by Universal’s 1932 The Mummy plot, this one is definitely
going for pure monster mayhem with gore, gross-out-gags, and lots of
supernatural lunacy. You know, less of a Mummy movie and definitely more
of an Evil Dead knock-off.