Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Is Reusing An Old Horror Trope
Some things are meant to stay buried.
With Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin brought an already gnarly horror franchise back to life in the most gruesome of ways. For the record, that’s high praise: it’s not easy bringing something new to the possession movie, as so many horror films have made their own meals out of that basic narrative. Cronin established himself as a director to watch with the 2023 film, but with his new take on The Mummy, he’s striving to prove that he can reimagine that same story once again.
Fans of Universal’s original Mummy franchise — the one starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz — have to wait a few years until The Mummy 4, but Lee Cronin’s The Mummy might just tide some over until then. Granted, the latter is shaping up to be a far cry from sword-and-sandals tomb raiding, taking recognizable iconography and twisting it into something much more sinister.
Cronin’s Mummy follows a classic formula: “What if your loved one came back, but was fundamentally changed?” It’s this question that a journalist (Jack Reynor) and his wife (Laia Costa) have to reckon with when their oldest daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace), returns after being declared missing for eight years. Authorities assumed she’d been abducted in the desert, but the flashes of her disappearance we see in the latest trailer point to a supernatural hijacking.
Katie was one of 57 missing persons found mummified in a crypt, and is the sole survivor of a grisly ritual. Those who found her claim she’s alive, but her grey, peeling skin, curling nails, and ghoulish disposition say otherwise. As her family tries to rehabilitate her, it becomes increasingly clear that the Katie they knew is no more. Whatever has replaced her is poised to wreak havoc — but will it bring us anything truly new, either to the Mummy franchise or to the possession subgenre?
With The Mummy 4 on the way, Cronin’s Mummy feels a touch redundant. The latter isn’t connected to the Universal property, but it is the third attempt to keep the Mummy concept alive. That might be a little confusing for audiences, and it doesn’t help that it feels a lot like Cronin’s last offering. Still, another take on the tropes he explored so well in Evil Dead Rise doesn’t have to be a bad thing. A well-made, suitably chilling horror movie will always be welcome, so long as Cronin brings something novel to the proceedings.
