Courtney Howard // Film Critic
Rated R, 2 hour and 13 minutes
Directed by: Lee Cronin
Starring: Jack Reynor,Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy, Veronica Falcón, Hayat Kamille, May Elghety, Emily Mitchell, Dean Allen Williams
LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY doesn’t solely deliver on its gag-inducing, grotesque gross-outs – which are diabolically disgusting and absolutely revolting (a compliment!). The freaky-as-fuck creepshow is indeed scary, scream-worthy and squirm-inducing. Yet it’s surprisingly more than that. This spooky, unsettling tale about caring parents who learn their missing daughter is alive but very unwell after many years also provides a subtle, stinging treatise on the toxic ties that bind families together and the inner demons that need to be exorcised. It goes hard, holding nothing back.
Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) has been living in Cairo, Egypt for the past 5 months with his supportive family – pregnant wife/ nurse Larissa (Laia Costa), their 9-year-old daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) and younger son Sebastián (Dean Allen Williams). He’s been stationed overseas as a news correspondent, and while everyone seems happy, he hopes to get a job on a morning show in New York City. But on the day he receives the joyful news he’s landed his dream gig, Katie disappears from their back yard at the hands of a mysterious cloaked “Magician” (Hayat Kamille), who has been secretly grooming her with candy for quite some time. The case is remanded to the care of budding police Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy). However, with no leads, there’s not much the police can do to investigate.
Fast forward 8 years and the despondent Cannons have returned to the States to live with Larissa’s elderly Catholic mother (Veronica Falcón) in her remote manse high in the coyote-prowled hills of Albuquerque, New Mexico. They’ve adapted to their new lifestyle, now with the added bonus of precocious 8-year-old daughter Maud (Billie Roy). However, things change when they get a call that Katie (Natalie Grace) has been found alive. Only there’s a disclaimer: She has awakened after being mummified in some sort of stasis and kept in a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. Even more shocking, once they bring her home, catatonic and wheezing, she doesn’t behave at all like the sweet girl she once was. She’s possessed.
Cronin, who explored the disintegration of the family dynamic previously in EVIL DEAD RISE, takes his time setting up the stakes for both the Cannon family and the kidnapper, so we care about the families affected, understand the consequences of their destructive actions and the motivations of all parties involved. Even the detective earns a fully-fleshed out backstory to make her a 3-dimensional presence, showing she’s got something to prove and the shoe leather of how she inevitably completes her arc.
Thematic sentiments dealing with the toxicities that can fester within the familial bond (like unexpressed anguish, grief and guilt) are exemplified by the Cannons’ struggle to expel the varying evils causing them harm. Katie’s demon pollutes young Maud and teen Sebastián’s (Shylo Molina) psyches and directly harms their physical safety. It’s also evident in Katie’s former best friend Layla Khalil’s (May Elghety) family as it drove her father and brothers to their abrupt ends. Motherly hyper-fixation on protecting their progeny is gently bandied about with Larissa’s dedication to curing her daughter’s ailments and The Magician’s drastic measures to keep world peace within her home.
Establishing the lore of a malevolent entity that’s plagued two families – both the innocent pawns and those tasked to be the ritual’s stewards – presents a few creative ideas that don’t logically connect as effortlessly as they should. That The Magician is unbothered by the sarcophagus’ disappearance is beyond explanation, as well as how Katie and, later, her father travel on airplanes when in compromised psychological states. Though the run time proves long in the tooth, there’s enough bite to justify the shlockteur’s elongated storytelling process.
While it takes a beat for things to get going, once the horrific hijinks begin, the film goes deviously berserk. Chomping on scorpions is surely disgusting. Ripping out baby teeth to swap them for the dentures of a dead woman is hilariously nauseating. The wake-gone-awry sequence, which is absolutely demented in its Rube Goldberg-esque setup, is worth the price of admission alone. Arjen Tuiten’s prosthetics work, which shows Katie’s skin progressively decomposing, is truly terrifying and gnarly. Her post-bath “get ready with me” scene involving toenail clippers and a full body de-gloving in the climax earn our dry heaves.
In terms of the performances, Grace is the film’s MVP. She channels Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST, yet still creates a unique physicality for this character, contorting her entire body in an intensive possession and chattering her teeth in Morse code. She’s a amusingly mischievous architect of fear. Mitchell balances a lot on her tiny shoulders, getting us caring about the character from the jump, showing a wide range of emotional frequency within a short span of screen time.
Aesthetically, Cronin and company offer many throwback delights, from the copious amount of split diopters (and pushed iterations of those) utilized by cinematographer David Garbett and a small handful of 70s-style dissolves from editor Bryan Shaw. Not only do these techniques augment the spooky atmosphere, they totally enhance the unsettling paranoia, tension and insanity coursing through the horror-driven sequences. Sound designer Peter Albrechtsen and his team also craft a deviously deceptive soundscape. Katie crouching and thumping her way through the dark, cobwebbed crawl spaces behind the walls uses 360 degrees of surround sound to disorient us and raise the intensity significantly.
Grade: B
LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY will be in theaters on April 17.
