Cook review: ‘The Mummy’ is wrapped up in gore … and little else

Don’t confuse “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” with a movie that stars Brendan Fraser.

Although there’s another film coming out in that franchise that stars Fraser, this isn’t it.

Neither is this a reboot of the 1932 “The Mummy,” the classic horror film starring Boris Karloff that’s part of the Universal Studios monster franchise.

Lee Cronin also directed “Evil Dead Rise,” a much better film. It may be that Cronin’s name is added to the title to keep potential viewers from thinking it has anything to do with other recent mummy movies.

This is, above all else, a gross-out movie that includes a thoroughly disgusting toenail scene, rivers of blood at every turn, and a ghastly scene involving a body oozing formaldehyde. To say it’s not for the easily disturbed is an understatement.

This film more closely resembles a lackluster version of “The Exorcist” than anything else.

The beginning of the film left me puzzled, with something about a dead bird and a sarcophagus. The story then jumps to Katie, (Natalie Grace) the daughter of a journalist (Jack Reynor, “Midsommar”) living in Cairo.

Katie is kidnapped by the mysterious mother of her friend. One moment, the girl is playing in the garden, and the next she has disappeared, with her panicky father running through the streets calling his child’s name as a sandstorm forces vendors and everyone else in the area indoors.

The story jumps ahead eight years with the family home in New Mexico, where they receive a call: their missing daughter Katie has been found, and she’s still alive … well, sort of. Katie isn’t their little girl anymore. With her contorted face and her limbs wrapped in bandages, she’s given to bizarre outbursts and can’t or won’t speak with her family.

The secret of what happened to Katie, and what motivated her abduction, doesn’t come clear until we’ve seen numerous grisly sequences.

This is one of the more lengthy movies I’ve seen so far this year. It wears thin pretty quickly: Gore does not equate with engaging. It takes two hours to get to the finale, which is ridiculous as can be.

I look forward to being enshrouded in the upcoming Fraser sequel as soon as I can.

1 star

Running time: two hours and 14 minutes.

Rated: R For excessive gore, violence, and foul language.

In theaters.

Watch the trailer here.

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