When the young daughter of an American family in Egypt is kidnapped, she is thought lost, but eight years later, she is found in a three-thousand-year-old sarcophagus that has survived the wreckage of a plane crash. But young Katie appears quite changed, and her reunion with her family only worsens the nightmare they have already experienced. 

Charlie (Jack Reynor) and his wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), are desperately happy to hear that their daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace), is alive and bring her home to the United States. Despite her being scarred, in need of a world-class manicure, and being virtually catatonic, they believe that returning to the family home will restore her to her previous self. But it is not long before strange things start to happen. 

Charlie’s thirst for knowledge about what actually happened to his daughter in the previous eight years will eventually unearth the truth as the story of the Cannon family culminates in a rather gruesome finale. 

Universal’s latest monster movie reboot is an intriguing and entertaining beast. Their previous director-led reboots were both created by Leigh Whannell: The Invisible Man proving to be superb and Wolf Man proving much less interesting. Here, they have asked Lee Cronin to give The Mummy a modern-day twist. Cronin, whose last film was the rather good Evil Dead Rise, has delivered an out-and-out horror film. One that, perhaps unsurprisingly, very much feels like an Evil Dead film, both in terms of its occasional means of using comedy as a release valve on the tension it builds and in its large amount of gross-out gore. Strap in for jump scares and lots of dripping fluids. 

Cronin takes his time to build the story and the tension. He takes the lore of The Mummy and twists it into something truly horror-worthy. This is not the family adventure movie that the likes of Brendan Fraser and Tom Cruise have provided in the last thirty years. Please take note: anyone who struggles with horror is going to find this a very tough watch. 

There are some great set pieces as well. A chase through the family homes’ crawl spaces, some particularly hungry wolves, and a superb use of the C-Word that should have you chuckling as you wait for the next scare. 

The only real issue present is that the end result does occasionally feel like just another horror movie where a child has a demon inside her. Although whilst this does occasionally feel like The Exorcist meets The Evil Dead, there is no getting away from the fact that evil, corrupted children trying to be saved by their parents is something that triggers fear. Although, there are definitely times when I was thinking, these people are not doing things that real people would do! Yes, let’s just wheel our catatonic, mute daughter who spent eight years in a tomb into the house and give her toenails a clip (another great set piece). They do actually try and address this anomaly at one point, but I was not convinced. It did raise a chuckle though, which was perhaps rather the point. After all, if I am willing to believe the horror elements of the story, perhaps I can suspend my disbelief a little further? 

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a pretty good horror film; it is an interesting adaptation of The Mummy lore and it is an entertaining watch. It certainly jumps above Wolf Man in the list of Universal Monster Reboots, but is still some way off the rather good The Invisible Man.