The Mummy Rise
*Author’s note: to read the pdf version of this review, click here
I’m about to say something that I believe to be universally (pun intended) true: horror fans want the remakes/reimaginings of the movies they love to be both faithful to the originals and be able to stand upon their own merits… especially those of the OG Universal monsters! That might be a bold statement, I know, but hear me out. Unless someone thinks a movie absolutely sucks, they are going to react the exact same way to news of a remake: hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Hollywood has made this the appropriate response anytime the movies/shows/books/whatever that we as audience members love get remade, because it’s a total crapshoot as to whether or not the remake will even be good, let alone actually improve upon the original.
The sad truth for horror especially is that, given the sheer number of remakes we get, a shockingly low percentage of them fulfill both criteria. Don’t believe me? Try googling “what horror movie remakes are considered better than the original”. The list of “definitive upgrades” is a measly 3 entries long…
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is in no way, shape, or form going to be the 4th entry.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t some okay stuff to be found in this new “reimagining” (emphasized for reasons I will get to later), but man, you really need to tamper your expectations in pretty major ways. For starters: you need to know that this movie isn’t all that scary, this movie isn’t some “body horror masterwork” like I’ve seen some people referring to it as online, and lastly, this movie isn’t a remake or “reimagining” of any version of The Mummy, but more so one of another movie!
Let’s start with the scare aspect. I was completely sold on this movie from the initial marketing and trailers–it looked creepy! Don’t get me wrong, I think that out of all of the possible monsters, the mummy is probably the least scary to me, and that is probably because there hasn’t really been a frightening mummy movie (no offense to the homie Imhotep but let’s be honest, those movies weren’t scary either). So when the first trailers for Lee Cronin’s version hit, and it looked like it could actually be scary (despite the fact that it deals with a haunted child/teenager, which should have been a red flag for me) I was ready. Hell, the fact that Lee Cronin was attached following Evil Dead Rise (which I thought was decent–by far my least favorite Evil Dead entry, but I digress) had me pumped too! It was all for naught though.
Stop me if you’ve read it from me before, but for the love of God POORLY LIT HOUSES ARE NOT SCARY! Seriously, so much of my viewing experience of this movie was me saying to myself “why is this family’s house so dark?” It’s legit distracting how much this movie relies on natural light to its own detriment. Get this family some damn light fixtures that aren’t just desk lamps please! To make matters worse, Lee Cronin does virtually nothing original in this movie: every scare feels like something we have seen before in better movies (hang in there, I swear the discussion is coming).
While there are a couple of interesting body horror scenes, there aren’t nearly enough. When I think of body horror, I think of The Fly–THAT IS THE TYPE OF BODY HORROR LEVEL MUMMY MOVIE WE NEED! It needs to be atmospheric, slow burn, agonizing body horror, not quick cut, hoaky, nail clipping!
My biggest issue with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy though is that this movie isn’t a remake/reimagining of any version of The Mummy (I shouldn’t say that with the utmost confidence, because I–like seemingly everyone else–refused to watch the Tom Cruise 2017 movie); instead Lee Cronin basically remade his own movie Evil Dead Rise. Cronin doesn’t even try to hide it really–the scares are the same, the premise is virtually the same, the setting feels the same, the only thing different is the setup (which is completely implausible anyways, because there is no way that anyone would be allowed to transport someone in as terrible of shape as Katie is when she is found). If you take Evil Dead Rise, and sprinkle in elements of The Exorcist, you have Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. I saw both Evil Dead Rise and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy with my sister, and the first thing she said to me once the credits started rolling on this one was “that movie was exactly like Evil Dead Rise!”
To be completely honest, this movie is more so a possessed child movie than it is a mummy movie. Even the family dynamic in this movie feels like a trope-filled retread of one of those: one parent is so deadset on “fixing” the child that they brought home that they are rendered completely oblivious as to what has started happening since bringing said child home, while the other parent is embroiled in solving the mystery of “what happened to my child when she was missing”, and neither one of them is paying attention to their other two kids.
If I had to give praise to something, it would be the finale of the film. Like I said, it’s a lot more like The Exorcist than any version of The Mummy, but it features the best body horror segment of the movie (which Cronin almost ruins as well by adding in a lot of deadite-level stuff), and ultimately the only really enthralling part of the movie for me (lets just say I would watch a Lee Cronin analog horror movie if he left the Evil Dead stuff out of it). It’s a shame that the parent tropes are just so cringy and lackluster that it kind of renders the strong final act and the sacrifices that the family make completely useless. Cronin could have easily cut out like 20-25 mins of useless exposition and family dynamic stuff and better salvaged the final act.
So, sadly, we are once again back at square one with another lackluster “reimagining”, and another miss when it comes to a scary mummy movie. At this point I am resigned to just accepting Universal’s plan to make another sequel to the Brendan Fraser Mummy franchise, because at least those films are entertaining and fun, unlike this mishmash of “reimaginings” that Lee Cronin has given us.