Director: Lee Cronin
Starring: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Verónica Falcón
Certificate: 18
Run Time: 133 mins

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a reimagining of the horror creature that originated with the Boris Karloff-starring 1932 film. A timeless tale, there have been umpteen sequels, remakes and reinterpretations, with the Brendan Fraser-fronted 1999 film my pick of the bunch. Most notable for Evil Dead Rise (which garnered an excellent critical reception, but I passionately disliked it), Irish director Lee Cronin is now taking a crack with his modern day reimagining – not dissimilar to how Leigh Whannell did this with The Invisible Man and Wolf Man.

Cronin’ film follows the Cannon family, who live in Cairo, where Charlie (Jack Reynor) works as an investigative television reporter. His wife Larissa (Laia Costa) is pregnant with their third child, and they both juggle looking after eldest daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) and son Sebastián (Dean Allen Williams). When Katie is kidnapped by a mysterious woman who’s been bribing her with chocolate at the bottom of the garden (unbeknownst to the parents), a search ensues.

The film then fast forwards eight years later where Charlie, Larissa, Sebastián (now Shylo Molina) and their third child, Maud (Billie Roy) now live in Larissa’s Catholic mother Carmen’s (Verónica Falcón) Albuquerque home. When a teenager witnesses a plane crash back in Egypt, he finds a sarcophagus in the wreckage and authorities discover Katie (now Natalie Grace) wrapped up in parchment inside in a catatonic state. Katie is soon brought home back to Albuquerque and it’s pretty evident straightaway that something’s not right…

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a mixed bag – the possession horror angle is an interesting one to take, rather than regurgitating the familiar tale of a pharaoh or important historical figure that’s resurrected. There’s also a brooding atmosphere (albeit to a point) and the hook of trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on with Katie had me gripped. But unfortunately, there’s plot contrivances and holes you could drive a truck through, and I didn’t care for the third act’s extended house setpiece.

Things start off very promisingly – the Egyptian opening is where the film’s at its strongest and a chase sequence when Katie gets kidnapped is particularly intense. It’s a shame Cronin doesn’t spend more time here developing the characters or giving us an insight into the investigation – that was what I really wanted.

The film’s on weaker footing once Katie’s reintroduced because you have to get past the contrivance of how a possessed teenager in such a state as hers would just be released back to her parents no questions asked. Although the central mystery of what happened to Katie remains gripping, Cronin’s film becomes a reasonably gnarly, but pretty standard possession piece in the vein of The Exorcist, with a minimal connection to classic Egyptian lore.

The third act interested me the least because it largely sticks within Carmen’s home and relies more on shock value (not dissimilar to Evil Dead Rise) with some pretty rote visuals, especially of some obviously fake coyotes. Although some have labelled the film as disgusting, (Cronin clearly enjoys revelling in gore and bodily fluids), it wasn’t as nasty as I expected – and it’s certainly less so than Evil Dead Rise.

As for the characters, it’s a mixed bag. Jack Reynor makes for a reasonably compelling lead and I bought his story as a reporter whose career has to take a back seat after a tragic event, but he still retains his journalistic nous. Laia Costa doesn’t fare as well as the mother, the problem being she’s simply underdeveloped. May Calamawy is excellent as the Egyptian detective investigating Katie’s disappearance, although one really has to suspend disbelief that she’d be just happy to jet off to America to help fight off Katie’s demons. And while all of the child or teenage actors are serviceable, none of them really stood out.

Ultimately, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is to be applauded for taking some risks, even if the result is a bit of a a. The idea at its centre of trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Katie is excellent, but I cared less for when it’s a standard possession horror where it apes greater works. Although some have taken issue with the length, I think the film justifies it but it’s paced oddly – I wanted more at the beginning and less of the usual possession affair later in the film. It’s certainly leaps and bounds above Tom Cruise’s apocalyptically terrible The Mummy (2017), but it’s a borderline as to whether Lee Cronin’s The Mummy can be considered a good horror film – interesting for sure, but very, very flawed.