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.
Granted, don’t take that phrase ‘knock-off’ to be a
negative, which is inherently what the word-of-mouth was on the street for Lee
Cronin's The Mummy. Perhaps it's being raised on Italian knock-offs and 80s
action blueprints, but a knock-off can be just as entertaining or solid as its
original. I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again - originality is
overrated and execution is where it’s at. While Lee Cronin's The Mummy
is certainly flawed, it’s also an outright horrific romp, where influences from
Lucio Fulci, Sam Raimi, and early Peter Jackson are on full display. It’s
outlandish in how complicated its setup is and is often grotesque to the point
of grand guignol slapstick, but it’s a wholly watchable movie, and there is
definitely space for that in the world.
The film definitely has three distinct tones. The first
part, I suppose the first act, very much feels like it might be starting a more
traditional Mummy movie. A family living in Egypt has their daughter
Katie kidnapped by an occult leader, and there’s a more serious tone to the
film overall in this section. There’s a more general setup to the family’s
dynamics, an introduction to the lore around the occult and the mummy, and the
overall tone is what the marketing used with its slogan ‘What happened to
Katie?’ to try to drum up the mystery at the film’s core. This is perhaps where
the film struggles the most, as it has to deal with massive time jumps, and
Cronin is desperate to jab some dark humor into the mix to keep up the energy,
as it feels like most of this could have been trimmed for pace. Truly, if this
were the actual film in its entirety, as promised by the marketing, I’m not
sure it would have worked nearly as well anyway, but as is - the first act is
what most audiences will assume the entire movie will be.
However, the film then essentially careens into its second
tone, which is, again, less a Mummy movie and more of a possession film.
Katie is discovered, she is returned home, and her weird tics and trauma come
to the surface as the family desperately tries to deal with her strangely
mummified condition, their own renewed emotions, and a dad, played by Jack
Reynor of Midsommar fame, who becomes obsessed with finding out what happened
to his daughter. In its own strange way, this portion feels more like an Exorcist
film than the Exorcist film that Blumhouse released a handful of
years ago, and I’m not sure that’s the compliment it should be. If anything,
this tone and portion of the film feel like they're setting up more for its
finale than trying to do anything distinctive with its possession narrative,
despite a relatively unnerving performance from Natalie Grace as Katie. We get
some creeps and reveals, but it's fairly rudimentary stuff…until it isn’t
Yet, stick with it all, and Lee Cronin's The Mummy pays out like a slot machine. Once its mystery and lore are established and the film gets its audience on board with the idea that Katie, our titular mummy girl, is somehow possessed and has some serious supernatural powers, the third act lets the director do what he did best in Evil Dead Rise. He slams the pedal to the floor, gets gooey, cuts brutally, and just unleashes hell on screen.
Using its one-house (and distinctively large - 'cause holy
hell does this place have some serious wall space) setting and the tight-knit
family members to create a sense of impending danger and threat, the film then
frees itself to go bat shit insane. There’s a tongue-in-cheek tone to it all,
not to mention a tongue-under-the-door gag that feels especially Sam
Raimi-inspired, and it’s body horror time. Family members get sucked into the
chaos; there are enough bodily fluids to make a nurse gag, and they still
manage to finally reveal what happened to Katie and try to get it to some kind
of happy ending. Well, as happy as a film like this could be. Gore hounds and
those who enjoy the Evil Dead series are going to immediately bite on
this finale, and why not - it’s perhaps the most energetic and well-executed
the film gets as it shakes off the shackles of trying to be a film it is not.
There are some incredible practical effects, some fun use of CGI, and there’s a
creativity to the camera work that feels especially fun. If only the rest of
the film were like this, then this might be one of the best horror films of the
year.
To be fair, I will give Lee Cronin's The Mummy credit
for being one of the most original Mummy movies I’ve seen. It’s rather
unfortunate that the film has something of an identity crisis that hops through
each act, and that its pacing feels a tad sluggish in the first half. When it finally finds its groove, jamming a finger into a throat wound to find
its voice, it’s actually quite the hellacious endeavor. It might not be what
the marketing promised, and it struggles to build a more dramatic familial
narrative under its fantastical, gore-soaked horrors, but it’s hardly the wild
misfire it might have been either.
No comments:
Post a Comment