Lee Cronin's The Mummy (18)

Journalist Charlie Cannon and his wife Larissa are distraught when their daughter Katie goes missing in the desert. Eight years later, the couple are overjoyed when Katie returns, seemingly safe and well, to them and their other children, Sebastian and Maud. The family's joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare and Charlie musters courage to face the horror head-on.

LondonNet Film Review

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (18) Film Review from LondonNet

Lee Cronin, Irish writer-director of Evil Dead Rise, resurrects one of cinema’s classic monsters in a supernatural horror thriller that wholeheartedly earns its 18 certificate for strong gore, violence and graphic scenes of body mutilation. You may never approach cutting a toenail the same way again after the filmmaker turns an act of self-care into a stomach-churning set piece that heralds a blitzkrieg of nauseating special effects in the chaotic second hour…

Television reporter Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) and pregnant wife Larissa (Laia Costa) are stationed in Cairo for his job with their young daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) and son Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams) when the unimaginable happens. A mysterious woman (Hayat Kamille) snatches Katie from the back garden of their rented home and uses an approaching sandstorm as cover for her escape. Eight years later, the emotionally broken family is living in Albuquerque in New Mexico with Larissa’s devoutly religious mother, Carmen (Veronica Falcon). The doting grandmother provides support for Charlie and Larissa, teenager Sebastian (now played by Shylo Molina) and youngest child Maud (Billie Roy), who was just a bump when Katie vanished.

Out of the blue, authorities in Egypt confirm Katie has been found – alive inside a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. A joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare when the Cannons are reunited with Katie (now played by Natalie Grace) and she is visibly changed from the cherubic girl who left them. An ancient evil manifests and slowly poisons Charlie and Larissa’s relationship. Back in Egypt, Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy) uncovers shocking evidence of a mummification ritual passed down through generations to imprison a demonic force.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a hellish far cry from the knockabout Indiana Jones-style fun of the trilogy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. The writer-director takes obvious delight in imagining skin-crawling scenarios to rival the cheese grater scene in Evil Dead Rise, allowing more than one creepy crawly to scuttle inside a screaming mouth. From the moment Katie returns to her shellshocked family’s embrace, the gore quotient increases and no member of the Cannon clan is safe from horrific injury (often inflicted while under the control of the malevolent presence).

The Egyptian mythology underpinning the carnage teeters on hokum when Cronin introduces found footage horror to his overstuffed mix. Blood-spattered calamity is staged with brio but Reynor and Costa’s central relationship is almost as emaciated as their mummified daughter, which undermines the spouses’ sacrifices to protect their imperilled brood. As Katie’s bandages come off, so the film unravels with cannibalistic fervour and Cronin chases a satisfying way to wrap up years of anguish and guilt. He deliberately leaves the sarcophagus ajar for the ancient evil to return but I’d be content if he kept mum on the idea of further evisceration.

– Kim Hu