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In theory I like the plan Blumhouse Productions’ seem to have around modernising all of the classic monster movies. First they did The Invisible Man, then last year they did Wolf Man and now they are doing The Mummy. Following this pattern, next it should be Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde. 

Although of course cinema has already made a number of contemporary stories around vampires. Universal Studios, who have famously been making films with these characters for over 100 years (and who backed the aforementioned The Invisible Man and Wolf Man but not this) did Abigail which is effectively a current day redo of the 1936 Dracula’s Daughter, and then there are all your Twilights and your Fright Nights etc. In terms of a new Jekyll and Hyde, I think The Substance might have closed the book on that one too. 

This said, this didn’t stop them with The Mummy. Tom Cruise did this one some time ago and while it doesn’t have a modern setting or sensibility there is the Brendan Fraser series that is returning in the next couple of years (with the directors of Abigail no less). Maybe that’s why this new one is called Lee Cronin’s The Mummy; to set it apart from any other interpretation. It certainly isn’t because anyone knows who Lee Cronin is; this is only his third movie and neither of the other two made him a household name. 

For the record then Lee Cronin is an Irish director who first made his name with a short film called Ghost Train in 2013. His first feature The Hole in the Ground was about a mother who suspects her son has been replaced by a demon and this got him the gig on Evil Dead Rise where it is the mother who then gets possessed by the demon. He did some TV directing but up until now that’s been it. Evil Dead Rise was a big hit, and it certainly had some style, but it didn’t suddenly make him Tarantino. 

Here’s the thing though. It is only the first of these updated monster movies that has truly had any innovative approach. 2020’s The Invisible Man was a sci-fi thriller more than a horror film and through its fantastical conceit laid out a powerful parable about toxic relationships and abuse. Wolf Man, on the other hand, was fundamentally just another story about werewolves attacking people in isolated wooded locations and this new movie is not even really a mummy story. It does involve bandages and a sarcophagus but essentially the director has made another Evil Dead/changeling movie. It is more about loved ones being taken over by ancient supernatural spirits and the fact that this malevolent force was once active in Egypt is a little irrelevant. There’s nary a cursed Pharaoh in sight. Maybe that’s what we should have expected from Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, maybe that’s what they were telling us with that title.

The movie is still entertaining and compelling though and I guess the new element they have laid over the top it is child abduction. There is something in seeing a family cope with the loss of a child and then her reintegration when she shows up alive but a little mummified seven years later. For any parents watching the film then the depiction of losing your daughter is the true nightmare but it is soon eclipsed by lots of gore and violence so any message or metaphor gets a little lost. If you are a horror fan then I’m sure this will satisfy but despite some good performances, further confirmation that Taylor Swift is an angel and a funny moment involving some false teeth it does not have much to offer beyond that. It certainly isn’t as good as Evil Dead Rise.

I’m not sure that we’ll actually get any more of these movies from Blumhouse now. There’s Frankenstein and Creature From the Black Lagoon still to do but Guillermo del Toro has effectively covered these and Timothée Chalemet has made himself the new Phantom of the Opera so that box is ticked too. It was a nice idea but time to wrap it up and bury it.