At The Movies with James Phelan: The Mummy
The Mummy
Irish writer/director Lee Cronin has travelled a long distance in a short time. Though he had a bedrock of short films beneath him, this is only his third full-length feature. And here he is sharing top billing with the classic mummified monster in a global blockbuster release with the full backing of a big Hollywood studio.
Exciting times for sure. The auteur title does help differentiate this current effort from a stocked field of regular attempts to revive the bandage-wrapped ghoul at the box office. Heck, even Tom Cruise had a go relatively recently. And as if the marketplace wasn’t crowded enough, apparently Brendan Fraser’s buccaneering family-friendly action franchise of the same name is on the way back to our screens too.
Where the majority of takes on the Mummy legend emphasise sand-encrusted adventure with a smattering of supernatural elements, Lee turns the formula on its head and is hell-bent on turning the material into a no-holds-barred horror. He is not messing around. This is unapologetically an 18 cert film. Designed to appeal to hardcore fans.
Cleverly, the premise preys on every parent’s fear for an engrossing kicking-off point. While stationed in Egypt, news reporter Charlie and his nurse wife Larissa lose track of their daughter Katie, who is lured out of their lush garden and then whisked away by persons unknown. It’s a nightmare scenario that is painful to even contemplate. Then the film compounds the nightmare when Katie is found alive eight years later.
Naturally, the reunion feels joyous and miraculous at first but the film dares to delve into even darker, more insidious questions for the audience. What if bringing your child back brings something unrecognisable and evil into your home? Because the Katie they get back is feral and violent. And that’s just for starters.
What Lee has done is dusted off and distilled down what a ‘Mummy’ film can be. So instead of snooping around sand dunes and pyramids, he has condensed the drama and horror into a domestic setting. The audience is miles ahead of the onscreen family in cottoning onto the fact that they are dealing with a demonic possession. Again, Cronin is clearly a student of the seminal works in his chosen genre. Echoes of ‘The Omen’ abound but perhaps because of focusing on a bed-bound instigator of evil, the film that looms largest in the list of influences must be ‘The Exorcist’.
The fact that this film can live with such comparisons is naturally a compliment but this ‘Mummy’ is ultimately not a subtle piece of work. It ups the gears and gore to a degree that feels like overkill. I’m far from an expert on body horror but certain stretches of shedding skin and carnivorous bites of human flesh lingered a little too long for my liking. And there’s a nail clipping scene that will make your toes curl. Or have you staring at the ceiling.
Even then, there is not any easy escape from the terror because this film also illustrates the integral use of sound in conjuring visceral experiences in horror films. So bones crack. Bugs are crunched. And teeth are pulled. I can admire the potency of these soundscapes but the sense of an endurance test was hard to dispel at times.
Regular readers will already be familiar with my bug bear about running times and ‘The Mummy’ qualifies for a slap on the wrist on this front too. Lee could have tightened up things with no discernible losses. Rather than delving on entrails and carnage, some of the best imagery was the simplest. Like a pack of coyotes drawn to a desert compound where they sense evil gestating and growing.
On a final note, Lee also deserves credit for bringing this shoot to Ireland. The shoot was split between here and Spain. As you would rightly assume, it was mostly interiors shot in Ireland, while Spain provided desert exteriors for Egypt and America. I should be well used to the movie-making magic that creates this illusion but it still impresses me when such convincing verisimilitude is achieved. It gets me every time.
