“What the fuck was our daughter doing in a 3,000 year old sarcophagus!?”

Yeah, I know, it’s real funny that LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY is called LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY. I’m not normal, so I saw that title and knew Lee Cronin was the director of an okay movie called THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (2019) that got him the job on EVIL DEAD RISE and now this is his third movie. Normal people see that title and think I don’t know who the fuck that is. So it’s funny that they wouldn’t let him just call his mummy movie THE MUMMY and made him put his name on it. This is true. But let’s move on.

Now, to the important business: this is a good movie! Research confirms it got mostly bad reviews, but I’m telling you, there are delights to be had here. I had heard people say it was more like an EVIL DEAD movie than a mummy movie, sometimes meaning that as a complaint, but obviously it’s a selling point for me. To me the worst EVIL DEAD movie (Lee Cronin’s) is better than the best modern mummy movie (the Tom Cruise one). But now this is the best modern mummy movie precisely because it uses some mummy tropes but with the energy, momentum, style and outrageousness of an EVIL DEAD. It’s very gross, it takes itself seriously but has a great sense of absurdity and dark humor, it has a momentum to it even though it’s over two hours. (I’m sure it helps that they have Bryan Shaw, editor of EVIL DEAD 2013, EVIL DEAD RISE and nine episodes of Ash vs. Evil Dead. Director of photography David Garbett is also a veteran of RISE and Ash vs.) LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY quite firmly fits into the spookablast category, so I recommend it to fellow aficionados of such blasts.

It’s the story of the Cannons, an American family living temporarily in Cairo, while the father Charlie (Jack Reynor, MIDSOMMAR) works as a correspondent for an English language news channel. He and his wife Larissa (Laia Costa, DUCK BUTTER) have to referee squabbles between their kids Katie (Emily Mitchell, WOMEN TALKING, PRISCILLA, THE APPRENTICE) and Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams, GOD’S NOT DEAD: IN GOD WE TRUST) and Larissa is pregnant and Charlie is trying to move up in his field and it’s all very exhausting, but they do it with love and humor.

But one day Katie is out playing in the garden, talking through the fence to a woman only credited as “The Magician” (Hayat Kamille, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS). Katie is friends with her daughter Layla (Aisha Laouini) but now she’s talking to this weird lady and not sure what to make of her when the lady hands her a nectarine. And then an animated beetle crawls out of the fruit and into her mouth and it’s horror movie time.

We know from a prologue that The Magician has a normal family but she’s up to something weird in an underground pit with a small pyramid in it. So this can’t be good. Charlie sees his daughter being taken and gives chase, but loses her in a sandstorm (the one touch weirdly connecting this to those other two THE MUMMYs). The police are useless and infuriate him by implying he’s a suspect.

Eight years later Katie has not been found. The now-born youngest daughter, Maud (Billie Roy, SPIRIT HALLOWEEN: THE MOVIE) is about as old as she was when she was taken, while Sebastian has grown into a sullen teen (Shylo Molina, RUST). They all live in Albuquerque with their very Catholic, former hairdresser grandmother Carmen (Veronica Falcón, MIDAQ ALLEY). But things change because of a small plane crash in Egypt.

It’s fucked up. One of the passengers is found high up in a tree, impaled through the eye socket by a branch. Also in the wreckage is the ancient sarcophagus the plane was hauling. When authorities open it they find Katie (now played by young actress Natalie Grace), desiccated, catatonic and wrapped in strips of leather inscribed with words in a dead language. Which I imagine is unusual.

Missing persons Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy, DJINN, Moon Knight), who originally got the case just because she knew English, calls and tells them they found Katie alive. When they get there they’re warned that her condition will be shocking. They are not warned that she has become Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, because this is the modern world. People don’t believe in mummies, and they don’t know who Lee Cronin is. (Okay, I take it back, it is worth joking about that title.)

So that’s the premise of this movie that is so entertaining: they bring home a literal monster, but it’s their daughter. She’s in a wheelchair, she doesn’t talk, they see her gnarled skin and thick, nasty toenails as health and grooming issues, not as monster features. They’re surely a little revolted by her, but they hide it well, like they should. Carmen wants to give her a makeover, even after the kid viciously headbutted her and bloodied her nose (man does this mummy love to headbutt).

They are increasingly confused by Katie’s bizarre actions, such as when she scurries around in the crawlspace and eats a scorpion, and when they try to yank it out of her throat she projectile pukes an impressive amount of green liquid. Sensing that this might be more than just malnutrition and trauma, Charlie uses his reporter skills to research what happened to her, and keeps in touch with Detective Zaki, also on the case. One of his biggest leads comes from when he realizes that Katie’s disturbing teeth clicking spells “LAYLA” in Morse code. This is an example of why I loved this movie. Such a crazy concept combined with a sound that’s just naturally, primally unnerving. Who would think to combine those things?

The siblings, especially Maud, are afraid of Katie. The parents tell them the right thing, that they need to accept their sister and try to support her, but they don’t see what the kids see. They don’t ever find out that Katie can suddenly talk and speaks to Maud through the door during a wake for their grandma and somehow reaches her tongue under the door to find out “how your little piggies taste,” the salive somehow possessing her and causing her to levitate. They do find out that Maud reaches into Grandma’s coffin, unthreads her mouth stitches and comes chomping at them wearing her false teeth. Also that she calls her teacher the c-word. This kid has a BABE movie poster in her room but in my opinion she is not currently behaving in a that’ll-do-pig-worthy manner.

Charlie notices the writing on the ribbons and brings them to be translated by an archaeology professor named Bixler (Mark Mitchinson, MORTAL ENGINES). I thought his voice sounded like an EVIL DEAD Kandarian expert, and then he plays an old recording with another EVIL DEAD professor type explaining the demon mythology! (Mitchinson was in both EVIL DEAD RISE and Ash vs. Evil Dead, but playing different types of characters.) They’re able to figure out some supernatural business while Detective Zaki tracks down The Magician and grown up Layla (May Elghety) and finds out even more.

Of the mummy movies I know, this is the one that most balances out the exoticism. I was struck by it opening with an Egyptian family joking around and singing an Arabic-language pop song together in the car. This will be the family shouldering the ancient curse that leads to turning Katie into Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, but even they are allowed to exist in the modern, rational world more than “the natives” usually are in this subgenre. The good guy Egyptian Detective Zaki doesn’t have a fez or a curved sword and is not part of ancient order, she wears a blazer and works in a big, impressive police headquarters. I know these are small things, but movies like this usually treat Egypt as a mystical kingdom trapped in time.

I found it very effective the way Cronin gives the Cannon family their quirks and humor (Sebastian using Katie’s doll to test his parachute, Charlie being self conscious about how he moves his hands on TV, Carmen baking cakes for every birthday Katie missed) despite the tragedy and horror. It provides a grounding humanity that makes the movie more watchable. It’s serious but not self-serious. There’s something relatable to me about a family struggling with something they’re not qualified for but not wanting to put their loved one in a facility, and Cronin has talked about writing this in response to his mother’s death. (Yeah, another one about grief.) Yet it’s not too grim for us to get some big, hearty laughs at how out of control things get (SPOILER example: when Katie throws Grandma out the window and she splatters on the front of the car and Katie is in the backseat giggling about it and then a bunch of coyotes run up and start tearing Grandma’s guts out like she’s Joe Pilato in DAY OF THE DEAD). Reynor and Costa are great, playing the emotions real but allowing for wide eyes signaling their awareness that this is some crazy shit.

Also it’s a monster movie with a good monster. Grace looks so weird and creepy (makeup designer: Liz Byrne, GRETEL & HANSEL, COCAINE BEAR, ABIGAIL, BLUE MOON, DROP), and she and her doubles (real and otherwise) do such a great job with the “erratic and extreme movements, repeating abrupt noises, and strange physical tics,” as the doctor put it. She gets up to such unexpected and disgusting trouble, it’s just a fun time watching her bug out. And I’m glad that someone in the world of horror understands that some of us still want to see them invent wild and spectacular new catastrophes to happen to bodies. If you have the budget to do it it’s almost your responsibility these days, and Lee Cronin is a responsible horror director. (People who notice split diopter shots and think there’s some kind of rule about how many you can put in one movie will disagree.)

I liked EVIL DEAD RISE, but I definitely underestimated Cronin. His first movie was more serious and didn’t make much of an impression on me, so I wasn’t sure how much I’d click with him when he wasn’t produced by Sam Raimi and going for an EVIL DEAD tone. But it turns out he can do something even better when James Wan asks him for his take on a mummy movie.

I look forward to LEE CRONIN’S THE SCORPION KING.