Lee Cronin’s The Mummy offers a new, extra gory take on the franchise

🎥 We went into Lee Cronin’s The Mummy blind — no trailer watched, no synopses read, and no reviews encountered. It was the best choice we’d made that day. Written and directed by horror veteran filmmaker Lee Cronin, The Mummy eschews the Indiana Jones-esque plots of its franchise predecessors in favor of a fresh, gruesome, and visceral 135-minute long horror epic that will have you glued to your screens, one eye closed, the other barely open.

The film starts off in Aswan, Egypt with an Egyptian family driving home to find their pet bird dead. Taking it as a sign that something is amiss with the guest downstairs, the parents (Omar El Saeidi and Hayat Kamille) then take a trip to their cellar, unearthing a tomb where a mummy seems to have awoken. It doesn’t end well.

Meanwhile, back in Cairo, Charlie (Jack Reynor), a news producer, and his wife Larissa (Laia Costa), a nurse, alongside their children Seb and Katie, are getting ready to move back to the US after Charlie lands a job in NYC. When Katie heads over to the garden to play with her dolls, she’s kidnapped by Hayat Kamille’s character. A trip to the Zamalek police station ends with the parents accused of harming their own daughter, but detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy) won’t let this go easy. Eight years later, Katie is found — but she’s not the same.

What we liked: At no point during its runtime did we know what was going to happen — and we enjoyed being kept on our toes. Lee Cronin’s refusal to follow in the footsteps of the franchise lent it a fresh feel, and one that was incredibly gripping. In terms of production and cinematography, the film excelled on both fronts. Acting performances were commendable, particularly Natalie Grace’s (who played the teenage Katie) and May Calamawy’s.

If you’re into gore, you’ll be in for a treat — if you’re not, you might want to sit this one out. The film is relentless in its quest to make the viewer uncomfortable. Certain scenes were so visceral to the point where some people were walking out before the third act, which is a shame, because the third act won a round of applause from those who were brave enough to stay.

What we didn’t like: A little research would have gone a long way. For a movie taking place mostly in Egypt, the choice of locations did very little to convince us — actual Egyptians — that was the case. A scene in the “Eastern Desert” showed a rainforest, what was supposed to be Cairo looked like a South American town, and the Zamalek police station looked a little like the Metropolitan Museum. The “Egyptian” characters spoke in an awkward, broken, and often Khaliji-sounding dialect, with the Egyptian-Palestinian Calamawy faring better, but not perfect.

Our verdict: We haven’t been this impacted by a movie in quite some time, and for that alone we’d say it’s worth your time. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a horror that truly shook us — and we don’t scare easy. If you can stomach the gore and ignore the awkward Arabic and the baseless Pharaonic lore, we’d say give this a go. Just don’t plan on having dinner before.

WHERE TO WATCH- Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is screening at Vox Cinemas at City Center Almaza, Mall of Egypt, and Mall of Alexandria, as well as D5 and CFCM’s Scene Cinema, and City Stars Cinema. Watch the trailer on YouTube (watch, runtime: 2:27).