Cert – 18, Run-time – 2 hours 13 minutes, Director – Lee Cronin
When their missing daughter is found after eight years, having been trapped in a sarcophagus, Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa) confront demonic attacks and goings on from the girl (Natalie Grace) who has returned.
Writer-director Lee Cronin has walked the indie chiller with 2019’s eerie The Hole In The Ground, and the up-to-eleven splatter fest of Evil Dead Rise. For his third feature he leans more into the supernatural and possession horror of the latter with the creepy child vein of his debut. Yet, his take on The Mummy feels lost in a mainstream studio vein. Only brief glimpses of his directorial style come through, and not even in the 18-rated blood and gore as such instances largely have little effect. One or two shots looking at practical effects can induce a small shudder, but for the most part there’s nothing anywhere near to the cheese-grater attack in Evil Dead Rise.
However, the biggest issues of Cronin’s film is in his screenplay which cycles through the same routine for much of the overlong narrative. Parents Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa) have spent eight years grieving their daughter (Emily Mitchell) after she was kidnapped in Cairo. However, when she’s found after a plane crash, trapped in a sarcophagus and wrapped in bandages (and now played by Natalie Grace), she’s taken back to the family home in Albuquerque, bringing some demonic goings on with her. All whilst Egyptian police (largely portrayed by May Calamawy) investigate Katie’s disappearance, and what happened to her.
Characters come in and out of the narrative, including a lecturer (Mark Mitchinson) investigating ancient script found wrapped around Katie, and each seems to strike a different tone with their scenes. It makes for an uneven film that starts to throw everything at the wall the more horror comes into play, particularly in a chaotic third act where nothing really sticks. Even before this a strange set of events sees the possession break out into a quiet gathering, where nobody questions the fact that the ceiling right above the buffet is falling apart with a ghoulish child crawling through it, or that the youngest of the family is casually pulling out her teeth.
There’s little impact or edge from what we see on screen, which consistently feels toned down from being as insane as it occasionally hints that it wants to be. Not on the same level as an Evil Dead, but certainly something with a more sinister and itching style to what we’re presented with here. When not pushing away a sense of boredom I couldn’t help but fight the feeling that this was a film that wanted to be more, wanted to do more and be that bit more intense but was being held back by something, and in this case it felt like a studio – the film is largely pushed under the production houses of producers James Wan and Jason Blum.
With just how much is going on and the different characters who jump in and out of the narrative the structure starts to feel jumbled, and makes the 133-minute run-time feel just that way. Starting to drag, especially as it tries to wrap up its various different threads individually, and starts to explore different endings. It all feels a bit messy and in search of itself, with only a few brief, crawling insights into a more fearful horror.
A jumbled, tonally uneven narrative makes way for only brief glimpses of effective creeps in a film that feels dampened by a poor script focusing on repetitive events which lean more generic than gruesome.
Just A Little Bit Random 