Major spoilers follow for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.
A familiar title gets a distinct new interpretation in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. The writer-director behind Evil Dead Rise tells a modern-day tale about an American family temporarily living in Egypt when their young daughter vanishes, only for her to return eight years later and encased in a sarcophagus. She’s alive, but also quite different and more unsettling than they remember…
Are You My Mummy?
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy ReviewThe Mummy (1999) Flashback Review
Speaking to IGN about the film, Cronin said that after revisiting the original 1932 version of The Mummy starring Boris Karloff, the starting point for his version was asking: “What about mummification for a different purpose? If you ask somebody, ‘What do you think of when you think of a mummy?’ I think most people will think of a Pharaoh, or iconic images we all know of lost kings that were found again and golden coffins and all of these things. And I thought, ‘What if a loved one was to be mummified in the context of a horror movie in the now? Why would that be?’ And then the why kind of kicked off this concept in terms of mummification for a different purpose, and why she was kidnapped, and where she fits into this longer prehistory.”
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is being released by New Line/Warner Bros. and comes from Blumhouse and Atomic Monster. In the lead-up to the release of this film, Universal separately announced they would be making a fourth Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, returning to the version of the title first launched in 1999, this time directed by the duo known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream VI). Along with the likely reason Cronin’s name was added to the title of his film, the Blumhouse Twitter account has been having particular fun trying to fend off potential audience confusion, continually tweeting in recent weeks: “BRENDAN FRASER IS NOT IN LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY.”
Asked if he was part of the decision to so openly acknowledge the two different Mummy movies, Cronin remarked, “I would always acknowledge it, because I think Brendan Fraser is an amazing actor, first of all, and I’ll be there opening weekend when [that] Mummy comes out in 2028, which is still quite a ways away. I think we’ve got plenty of space here for people to enjoy this Mummy movie before then. I love Radio Silence. I’ve met with them on a number of occasions and they’re super talented and so creative, but yeah, we’re always aware that people look sometimes for the shortcut to make a connection. But at the center of our endeavor, we have an opportunity to do something different and to break expectations and to play around with what people think they’re going to see. And for me, that was at the heart of my decision for this to be my next movie. So I was super aware of [someone asking] ‘What are you making next?’ ‘The Mummy.’ And they go “Oh!” and telling them, ‘No, not that Mummy. It’s something different.’ That was really exciting to me.”
Cronin dug into more spoilery details of his The Mummy with IGN, including some of the many notably gory sequences.
Pedicure From Hell
After the now teenage Katie Cannon (Natalie Grace) is discovered and brought back home to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Cannon family have to adjust to the snarling, unkempt, and malnourished person before them as they hope to break through and find the girl they once knew. In one memorable scene, Katie’s mother, Larissa (Laia Costa), and her grandmother, Carmen (Verónica Falcón), attempt to tend to Katie in ways that have clearly been long neglected, including clipping her grotesquely long and mangled toenails.
As they use a large clipper to try and snap through her incredibly hardened nails, the audience is already wincing… and I’m sure I’m not the only one who assumed, okay, one of these nails is about to be torn off the toe, and it’ll be gross. That is what happens, yes, but then so much more, because with one big tug of the clipper, not only does the nail tear off but a long strip of Katie’s skin with it, which completely rips the flesh off of her foot and then up her leg in one fell swoop, leaving a bloody, nasty long wound in its wake.
As they use a large clipper to try and snap through her incredibly hardened nails, the audience is already wincing.
Said Cronin of leaning into the audience’s expectations and going much further: “It’s the dark magic trick, right? And that’s part of the fun that you have when you make horror movies. Part of what I enjoy about the movies that I make is trying to misdirect. And I think great misdirection comes from the fact that people know roughly the ballpark you’re playing in, but they just don’t know when it’s coming, how it’s coming, or exactly how it’s going to pay off. So that was a moment that came to me quite early in the development of the story.”
Cronin said what makes it all the more wrenching is the genuinely kind intent from Carmen and Larissa, noting: “It’s also quite a tender moment, because it’s about this grandmother and mother caring for their loved one in a really holistic way, trying to massage her skin and cut her nails and comb her hair and make her somehow whole again, and reintroduce her to the family. Then I make it twisted. I take that sweet sentiment and I turn it into something that’s much darker and much more sinister. But then, in turn, on the other end of that, the third part of that equation is [that] it opens up, literally, a pathway into the investigation.”
Katie Wraps
The toenail scene leads into investigation because of the bizarre realization that Katie’s father, Charlie (Jack Reynor), makes in the aftermath. He comes to discover that the strip of skin from Katie’s leg is in fact multiple different layers on top of one another, and when separated they have ancient Egyptian symbols on them, sending him on a hunt to find out the source behind them and what they mean for his daughter’s current plight.
Later in the movie, after Katie – or more specifically the ancient demonic force inside her which she was meant to contain within that sarcophagus until her body wastes away and the next host is found – has also entranced her brother, Sebastián (Shylo Molina), she disturbingly asks him to help her “undress.” But this ends up giving us a fuller understanding of what has happened, as Katie begins to tug away not at her clothing, but at her skin. But it isn’t just skin; she’s covered in very thin, impossibly old wrappings filled with the tiny writing Charlie found, which at a glance are not visible and simply look like her damaged skin. This ends up being, of course, Cronin’s twist on how to incorporate the idea of a mummy’s wrappings in a way that wasn’t the go-to usual overt visual.
Explained Cronin: “I wanted to hide the monster in plain sight to begin with and for there to be enough doubt in the parents’ minds. Not even doubt, because they would do anything to care for their loved one and bring her home. I think even if she was covered in Karloff’s bandages, they still would have brought her home and tried to make her better, because they care for her and they love her. So yeah, that was actually quite fun, this idea that what you think is the skin, because it’s settled over time, actually starts to erode and prove to be something different, and is actually a second skin that’s containing both their daughter, the thing that they’ve really been searching for, but [also] a terrible evil at the same time.”
The Wake to End All Wakes
Arguably the wildest and most impactful sequence in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy occurs at Carmen’s wake, after an encounter with Katie leads Grandma to being thrown out of a window and fed on by coyotes (it’s a rough day for Carmen!). This scene stands out for how it just keeps escalating, with one shocking and gloriously disgusting thing happening after another. Where to begin? Well, the family’s youngest child – 8-year-old Maud (Billie Roy) – is now under Katie’s demonic sway and yanks out her own teeth, spitting blood onto deviled eggs that are then eaten by unknowing mourners. Next, Maud climbs into the open coffin, tearing open the stitching keeping her dead grandmother’s damaged mouth closed, pulls Carmen’s dentures out and puts them in her own bloody mouth, and uses them to bite Charlie. Then, Katie leaps into the coffin, chomping into Carmen’s corpse before the coffin tips over, sending them both spilling to the ground, at which point embalming fluid pours from Carmen’s body and Katie – ugh – eagerly licks the fluid up from the floor.
Even as a lifelong horror and makeup FX gore fan, that last moment actually made me a bit nauseous, which I told Cronin I found impressive, asking him if he came up with all of the various things that would occur in that wake scene gradually or all at once. Cronin replied: “It came in one very aggressive blast of thought, and it came from my own experience of experiencing a wake with a loved one. That is an important part of the process when somebody passes away, and it’s a particularly big thing in Irish culture. But it’s also traumatic when you reflect upon it on a personal level, because someone that you love is there, but they’re not there. They’re in a box, and the box is open, but you’re gonna have to put the lid on and put them in the ground. And these things do turn over in my mind, my own life experiences, and I thought I need to deal with this one, so I’m gonna try and create the craziest wake sequence that I can. And sometimes when I have those types of ideas, it does come in a bit of a blast.”
Throughout the film, it had been established that the aging Carmen was trying to hold onto her beauty the best she could, including wearing those dentures. Cronin explained: “The teeth aspect of that was always in my mind. I wanted there to be a payoff from that, because it just felt like, again, a cool moment from a genuinely personal experience. I’ll talk about that another day! But it was something that I’d connected with, and then with the wake, sometimes when you say all bets are off, it’s the type of scene that comes together [quick]. I refined it a bunch, and it was really difficult to shoot, but the bones of it were there from the get-go. And it’s probably my favorite sequence in the movie, or close to my favorite sequence, because it’s completely batshit crazy.”
“I always get hands on when it comes to the blood and the sticky stuff.”
I mentioned that while I was personally most grossed out by the embalming fluid bit, a woman next to me was conspicuously wretching at the blood-covered deviled eggs being eaten. Cronin chuckled, remarking that “I think the embalming fluid one is pretty wild, and the deviled eggs was one of those ones that was always there, but I never thought about it much in my mind. It’s funny how some things catch on, because a lot of people love that moment, but I never thought about it. But it is a story told in three parts, which is always important. And the blood spit on the deviled eggs is actually me spitting off camera, because everyone was trying and couldn’t quite get it right. I’m like, ‘Give me the blood bottle! Let’s go.’ I always get hands on when it comes to the blood and the sticky stuff.”
Family Blood Ties
As you can tell from reading the descriptions above, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy does not go easy on its three kid characters, who are right in the thick of it – with “it” often including gory mayhem – throughout the movie, much like the younger characters in Evil Dead Rise. Said Cronin: “If you’re telling a story about family, family often includes children, and if I’m trying to tell a horror story around a family, those children are probably going to be somewhat in the center of it.”
Cronin had noted in a previous interview with IGN’s Scott Collura that Poltergeist was one major influence on his Mummy movie, as far as a suburban family dealing with this supernatural threat, though he noted, “It’s funny, because in Poltergeist, in a lot of ways, the kids within that family don’t come under an enormous amount of threat. The older daughter just kind of vanishes and it’s talked about that she’s staying with friends. One of my favorite scenes in Poltergeist is the little son that just gets in a taxi. The parents don’t even walk him down to the taxi! They stand up in the doorway, and he slams the door and has to put his own bag in. But in my stories, yeah, the kids are always at the center of that whirlwind. And I think if I’m investing in trying to threaten family, then I’m also threatening innocence, and children are very reflective of that innocence I’m trying to corrupt and play around with on screen.”
Though poor Carmen certainly dies hard, the rest of the family does make it through, with Katie freed from her possession and the other kids released from their spells. And though Charlie offers up his own body as the next vessel for the Mummy in order to save his daughter, the final moments indicate that won’t be for long, as Larissa – joined by Egyptian detective Dalia (May Calamawy) – are going to use the woman who did this to Katie in the first place (Hayat Kamille) as the next person to hold this ancient evil inside them, thus freeing Charlie.
Cronin revealed that he never really considered getting more lethal with the family beyond Carmen, stressing that “In this movie, the kids were always going to make it. In Evil Dead Rise, I wipe out two kids, and it’s not that I feel bad about that, because it was great for that story in that movie. But I felt that in this movie, I did want there to be [a message that] family can change. That’s the point. When you suffer loss, [the family] can also survive. So I wanted there to be an opportunity for the family to survive, and for there to be sacrifices that are made, but there is something to be reunited, some hope, albeit done in kind of dark and playful ways.”
