The youngest mummy in cinema is also the bloodiest

Let's start by resolving the question that has surely arisen as you've looked at this review: who on earth is Lee Cronin? He is a director with two previous feature films, A hole in the ground and the appreciable Possessió infernal: el despertarPossessió infernal: el despertar. Credits that hardly justify including his name and surname in the title of a work, a deference usually reserved for demiurges like Fellini. It is possible, however, that this christening has less to do with the ego of the Irish filmmaker and more with the marketing juggling of Warner Bros. and Blumhouse to try to retain the hook of an iconic figure of the fantastic like the mummy and, at the same time, distance it from recent filmic incarnations, the fiasco starring Tom Cruise and the adventurous, family-friendly franchise led by Brendan Fraser.

Perhaps so many precautions were not necessary, as the film hastens to make it clear that it is going in another direction: here we will not find ancient desiccated bodies, and the bandages fall off quickly, tearing the skin of a girl who is the victim of a horrifying Egyptian ritual. Embodying arcane monstrosity in a tender body is a suggestive idea, but in practice it also shows the limits of Cronin's imagination, who is content to replicate the codes of evil possessions in the mold established by The Exorcist and, above all, by the bloody antics and fluid spilling of a certain saga created by Sam Raimi, familiar territory for the filmmaker. For lack of originality, Lee Cronin's The Mummy bets everything on gruesomeness, staged with spectacular vehemence, and also with a disguised sly smile. Enough to keep the artifact's vital signs going, but not enough to overlook the imbalances of an excessive runtime and dramaturgical decisions as careless as trying to pass off Laia Costa as the daughter of Mexicans.