Review: 'Lee Cronin's The Mummy' serves up buckets of icky fluids in a grossout thriller has little to do with the classic monster movies

The title of “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” raises two question immediately: Who the f-bomb is Lee Cronin? And why is his take on the classic monster movie worth spending more than two hours of your life?

Answer No. 1: Lee Cronin is an Irish director who has made two movies before this, both horror movies: “The Hole in the Ground,” which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and “Evil Dead Rise,” the 2023 sequel to the reboot of the Sam Raimi horror classic. 

Answer No. 2: After watching this oozing mess of jumbled horror tropes, I have no earthly idea why some big names in horror — including producers James Wan and Jason Blum — took a flyer on this guy. 

This version of “The Mummy” is not related to the classic Universal monster movies, or the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz adventure movies, or even the single entry in Universal’s aborted “Dark Universe” franchise. Like those others, the story does start in Egypt, and involves someone in a sarcophagus all wrapped up and carrying an ancient curse. After that, this movie is its own thing, and a pretty disgusting thing at that.

American TV reporter Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) is working in Cairo, and living with his wife, Larissa (played by the Spanish actress Laia Costa), and their two kids — with a third on the way. Their 8-year-old daughter, Katie (played at this stage by Emily Mitchell), is kidnapped by a mysterious woman (Hayat Kamille), and disappears in a sand storm. The Cairo police suspect Charlie and Larissa of killing their daughter, and they return to the States with no leads on where Katie ever went.

Flash-forward eight years, and Charlie and Larissa are living in Albuquerque, with Larissa’s mom, Carmen (Veronica Falcón). Teen son Sebastian (Shylo Molina) still holds some memory of Katie, while 8-year-old Maud (Billie Roy) was still in utero when her big sister vanished. 

Because of a plane crash in Egypt, police find a mysterious sarcophagus — and when researchers open it, they find Katie (Natalie Grace), now 16 and badly disfigured. The junior cop on the case before, Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy, from TV’s “Ramy”), calls Charlie and Larissa, and arranges to have their daughter returned to her in America. But something’s deeply wrong, and Katie seems to be under some evil influence that soon spreads through the house, with horrific and really icky consequences. 

There’s not enough in Cronin’s revamping of the “Mummy” narrative to rank it better than anything Boris Karloff or Brendan Fraser or even Tom Cruise were ever associated with. Cronin’s chaotic script throws everything, especially fluids, at the screen with neither rhyme nor reason — and goes out of its way to separate the main characters, lest they ever compare notes for five seconds and figure out there’s a pattern to Katie’s possession. Only when Zaki finds the truth about the mysterious kidnapper, then flies to Albuquerque in record time, does the plot earn any semblance of understanding, but by then it’s too late.

“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is long on gory details and short on comprehension. It’s so wrapped up, if you will, in its horror effects that it loses the thread of coherence. 

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‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’

★★

Opens Friday, April 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong disturbing violent content, gore, language and brief drug use. Running time: 134 minutes.