THE SUN'LL COME OUT TOMB-MORROW

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Lee Cronin's The Mummy--No fewer than four earlier horror movies have been titled The Mummy; this new one comes with a onscreen directorial signature. Cronin is the Irishman who wrote and directed the 2023 Evil Dead Rise. His mummy flick should please fans of that movie, as it's essentially Evil Dead Rise with some Egyptian trappings. For the rest of us, though, it's likely to be a tough slog.

An expat American family--TV reporter Dad (Jack Reynor), medical Mom (Laia Costa) and a daughter and son--live in Cairo. The daughter, Katie, is abducted from the family's garden by a witchy presence. Eight years later, poor Katie not having been found, the family has moved back to Albuquerque, and added a new adorable daughter, as well as the sassy gramma (Veronica Falcon).

When Katie turns up alive back in Egypt, catatonic and desiccated, they bring her home and try to care for her there. Gruesome mayhem ensues. Meanwhile back in Egypt, a police detective (the striking May Calamawy) probes the mystery of what happened to her. As might be expected, it's not pretty. 

Cronin is by no means without talent. He has a fine eye, and he can generate atmosphere. His script is nutty but coherent on its own terms, unlike, for instance, that of the recent undertone. There's nothing really new here--the story seems indebted both to The Exorcist and to John Carpenter's 1987 Prince of Darkness--and many of the plot points, starting with but not limited to the idea that a child in this condition could be cared for at home, are deeply stupid. But that in itself wouldn't be a dealbreaker if the movie weren't so rotten-spirited.

Again, this may just be what the market will currently bear for contemporary horror fans. But, as with Evil Dead Rise--I'm a big fan of the original Raimi Evil Dead flicks--I seem to have lost my stomach for this sort of extreme horror shtick; I can't find the terrorizing and torture of little kids entertaining.

The smug, nervy way the director uses wonderful, comforting elements as a supposed ironic contrast to his shocks also soured me on Lee Cronin's The Mummy. He doesn't seem, for instance, to share the Mel Brooks 2,000 Year Old Man's enthusiasm for nectarines. And Cronin uses maybe the most uplifting of American popular songs, The Band's "The Weight," as the background for a scene of ghastly gore.

Fortunately, "The Weight" is more powerful than any splatter that Cronin can muster. But of all this movie's sins, that may be the hardest to forgive.