The Mummy Does Not Shy Away From Nasty

            I have no real relationship with The Mummy franchise; I started watching the first movie this morning just to see what it was like in comparison to the new Mummy movie, and they are nothing alike. I also watched the very old Mummy movie last October from 1959, and that one was comical with its depiction of a mummy. It looked super dated too, but it was just a fun time. None of these come close to the horrors that were portrayed on the screen of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy this weekend. I had not seen the trailers for this at all, so I was not expecting a traditional horror film. The Brandon Frasier one is closer to an Indiana Jones film, but this was basically an Exorcist remake in the Middle East.

            The movie starts with an uncovering of an ancient coffin, which leads to a woman being infected by some ancient horror. Her family had been protecting it, and now she had to find someone else to place it in, and children are the best vessels. So she finds a kid playing by herself in a garden and slowly builds her trust with candy, and one day, she goes in for the full abduction, and she takes Katie. Her dad, Charlie, notices almost immediately, but he is not able to catch up to her.

            Eight years pass, and Charlie and his family no longer live in Egypt, they live in the desert in New Mexico, and Charlie and Larissa get a call that Katie has been found, and that she was found in a coffin in the cargo of a plane that crashed. Also she is nothing like she was before. Her skin is grayish, she is mute, and her stare is vacant. Her family, of course, is optimistic that she will return to normal, but her behavior starts to veer towards the aggressive side and becomes very erratic.

            Charlie continues to push the detective in Egypt to find out what happened to Katie, so that they can try to get her the specific help she needs, and as the detective searches, Katie’s behavior gets worse. She creeps around at night and eats scorpions. She starts to whisper to her brother and sister, and it starts to climax, when she uses her powers to kill her grand ma. Then the detective finds a VHS tape that shows what happened to Katie, and they think they can cure her.

            As mentioned, I did not look up anything about this movie going into, and I forgot that Lee Cronin was the director of Evil Dead Rise, which is one of my favorite horror movies in the past five years, and a lot of that DNA is present in this film. A large part of this comes from the body horror element. In Evil Dead Rise, the lasting object of gore came from a cheese grater being used on someone’s leg. In this movie, there was no cheese grater, but there was a similar result. Katie was having her nasty rock hard toenails cut, and somehow, her mom pulled on the nail too hard, and a whole strip of skin came off of Katie’s leg as well as her whole toe nail. It was disgusting.

            There were plenty of other gross out moments as well. The moment that actually made me gag came during the funeral scene. Katie comes down, and she takes a bite from her grandma’s neck, and formaldehyde oozes out, and one of the grandma’s friends throws up a hardboiled egg, and that made me gag. I never gag watching movies, but that throw up was so gross. Also there was a scorpion that was eaten, and a scorpion that crawls into someone’s throat, and it creates a hole with its tail, then it is dragged out. Nasty. Overall, there is just a ton of gross skin peeling stuff, and a large amount of gore, so this is not for the faint of heart.

            It is also just an incredibly dark movie. It is about a young girl getting abducted, and she is apart from her family for eight years, and when she comes back, she is a shell of herself, almost literally, like it feels like her skin is hardened and that she is hollow. Then there is all the stress that this puts on the family. Her parents must sacrifice to take care of her, and it basically becomes a full-time job, because she is incapable of doing anything, and she may snap into a fit at any moment, and then she would need to be sedated. It is truly a tragic story of sacrifice for family, and a love for a child no matter what.

            This felt more like an Exorcist movie than a Mummy movie. There is a demonic possession, although this is an Egyptian demon, not a Christian demon, and just like the original Exorcist, it is a young girl that is affected, and she does some messed up things. Her voice does not completely change like in the Exorcist, but many of the actions are similar. It also brings in the gore elements from Bring Her Back, plus there is a taped ritual, and a parent willing to do anything to save their child even if they are possessed.

            My biggest issue with this film was the run time. It felt like this movie went on forever. It had really great moments, but they took so long to get there. Horror movies are traditionally shorter, and it takes a top tier one to be able to make it over two hours and sustain that greatness throughout. Sadly, this movie could not do that. By the time they made it to the climax, I was a little over the whole thing. The scares were still effective, and it did make me feel very uncomfortable, but I felt like I had hit my limit for gross outs and scares and was ready to be done. Then the epilogue adds too much just to allude to a future sequel. I enjoyed it and would be okay with a sequel, but not every movie needs an epilogue to show that it is coming, like just start the next movie that way.

            I gave this movie 3 stars. There were times when I thought I was going to give it a 4 or 3.5 stars, but the longevity wore on me, so it went down to three. The scares are super effective, and the movie made me feel super uncomfortable multiple times, which I look at as a pro. The sound and visuals were mostly solid as well. Sound is key for creating grossness and scares, and of course, practical effects are key for the grossness as well. The actors mostly did a good job as well, but I hated the dad. Jack Reynor just felt like he did not fit in with this cast. The kids play a major role in this film, and I feel like they did a solid job, especially the girls, they were both really creepy. If you are a horror fan, I would recommend watching this, but if you are not, stay away!!!