“Longlegs” started a quiet revolution in the horror film industry when it doubled down on its marketing as “the scariest movie you’ll ever see” to unprecedented success, and it wasn’t long before every mid-budget horror wannabe came with their machetes, chainsaws and knife-hands to carve up their piece of the superlative pie.
One might look at “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” though, and rightfully suppose that the whole ordeal has gone a bit too far.
The mummy in question, an unnerving, borderline-demonic 8-year-old girl who rips at her skin, gnashes her teeth and whispers ancient Egyptian curses in a playful voice, is an awfully mean-spirited swerve from the typical rolled-up, lethargic old zombie we’ve come to expect. Bringing in Cronin, who made his name with the stylistic, gross-out gore of “Evil Dead Rise” in 2023 also certainly won’t entice anyone who came in looking for Brendan Fraser.
Ultimately, though, this “Mummy” hits the sweet spot between disturbing, engrossing and, well, grossing. Realistically, the film screams of being yet another made-to-flop Blumhouse release put out to fill theaters with something just a mite scarier than “Super Mario Galaxy,” but Cronin’s influence here spins it from utter trashiness into a meaningful horror romp that has far more to offer than the creepiness of its pint-sized pharaoh placeholder.
The story follows an American husband and wife (Jack Raynor and Laia Costa) whose oldest daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace), disappears in Cairo. When she is found in a sarcophagus in a near-paralyzed state eight years later, the family must contend with a dark force acting through her before it tears them apart further.
This is a reboot in the style of Blumhouse’s other recent takes on the classic movie monsters. Leigh Whannell revived the Wolf Man as an avatar of paternal abusiveness last year and brought back the Invisible Man as a narcissistic, controlling ex-boyfriend in 2020, and while I quite enjoy Whannell’s takes for their earnestness, it’s hard to deny that “The Mummy” is coming out of the tomb with a bit more pep in its adaptational step.
Grace’s performance is entertainingly off-kilter and Costa consistently holds down the emotional core of the script — she would have made a better protagonist than Raynor, whose constant bug-eyed expressions never ceased to crack me up — but Cronin’s stylistic turns are the star of the show here.
Plainly stated, if it’s scariness you want, “The Mummy” is the movie to watch. It expertly restricts your awareness to make the next big scare more unexpected than the last while still teeing up several especially graphic episodes that are just a delight to see played out. One scene in particular made me reflexively curl up into a ball in my seat, and by the end, my neck was so stiff from peering behind my jacket that I felt like it was I that had been in the sarcophagus.
That might sound negative, but to Cronin’s credit, he crafts an experience that simply isn’t looking away from. The fast-paced editing helps you digest it as well — even as you’re watching a young girl digest a scorpion, for crying out loud — since the quick cuts transform each gross-out bit into a punchy bit of visual impact rather than a true vomit-holding endurance challenge.
Katie is rarely shown head-on, like an estranged friend you can’t look in the eye, but her screen presence is palpable as tension and mystery mounts about the cause of her disappearance.
That mystery gets handled by supporting character Detective Zaki, played by May Calamawy, whose side quest á la Egyptian “Silence of the Lambs” provides a comfortable — the fact that Cronin makes this level of tension feel comparatively comfortable should tell you all you need to know — reason to get away from the contorting and blood-spattering main sequence a bit.
At the same time, Cronin’s “Mummy” succeeds not just because it’s cruel, stylish and gross, but because on top of those things, it is a staunchly empathetic story.
In a lesser film, erroneously refusing to recognize that your obviously-possessed-by-a-mummy daughter is, in fact, possessed by a mummy would rank among the most tedious and flat-out dumb horror movie mistakes of all time. Instead, Cronin’s script leaves a surprising amount of room for heart, and not just the blood-pumping kind.
Reynor and Costa’s characters may be played-out, but their commitment to their daughter comes across genuinely. Katie is coded as a victim of human trafficking at several points in the film, and while it makes for an imperfect metaphor, “The Mummy” broadly pays it off.
Anybody can make a movie where Jason Statham or Milla Jovovich smashes in the heads of child traffickers with a crowbar — though I seriously doubt anybody actually saw “Working Man” or “Protector” — but fewer people, if anyone, can claim to make a film where a young girl thematically positioned as the victim of such abuse lashes out with obscene violence, only to be saved with love and redemption.
It’s a simplistic, wobbly idea, but that’s where Cronin and editor Bryan Shaw wrap the package up with stylistic flair. Less impressive are the camera tricks or close-up shots of grisly, goop-covered body parts and more revelatory is the strong writing used to make them shine — or spurt, in this case.
I have a deep mistrust of any horror film that thinks itself important enough to cross the runtime Rubicon into two hours, but at 2 hours, 14 minutes, “The Mummy” only ever feels a hair too long, and by the time it reaches the intense third-act finale, I found myself wishing it would last another 10 minutes more. The escalation from the slow-burn action in the middle lets the thematic thread dangle a bit, but I wasn’t about to tear my attention away from the screen long enough to notice.
The film will ultimately languish near the middle of the April box office before dropping from memory — almost like the guy whose sole notable credit is an “Evil Dead” sequel shouldn’t have been used for name-brand marketing — but “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” deserves to be remembered for more than throwing a little girl in some creepy wrappings.
Not every horror movie can be an all-time scary big hit, but Cronin puts in enough legwork to prove that even a lazily-conceived reboot project shouldn’t have to skimp on the stylishness, scariness and heart that makes the genre so resonant. We can only hope when “Longlegs” gets the remake treatment in 2118 that the 6-year-old they cast as Nic Cage gets the chance to star in something similarly enjoyable and profound.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
