This review contains spoilers.

You’d have to be living under a rock not to notice that the Hollywood remake machine is working overtime. After last year’s box-office disappointment remakes “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Wolf Man,” I was skeptical of Lee Cronin’s attempt to reimagine a classic.

Unfortunately for Cronin, and myself, I was proven right.

With a mediocre plot and average — at best — script, “The Mummy” adds no novelty or mystery. You’ll see the same shots and jumpscares in classics like “The Exorcist” or “Insidious.” The cinematography is dull, the dialogue expository rather than character-defining. 

The 1999 version had infinitely more substance. All Cronin does here is take a basic supernatural horror film and attach it to the name of a well-known franchise. 

The movie opens with an Egyptian family coming home to find their pet bird dead. They venture into their cellar, where we see that their home is built upon a black pyramid buried under the ground. In a black stone coffin, the mummified remains of a human begin to writhe, and the father is killed by an unknown force. 

The film then cuts to the Cannon family, the movie’s central characters. Charlie (Jack Reynor), the father, is an investigative journalist and his wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), is pregnant with their third child. 

Their daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace), is friends with Layla (May Elghety), the daughter of the previously seen family. Their son, Sebastián (Shylo Molina), is given so few lines that it’s easy to forget he exists.

Katie is visited by Layla’s mother, the Magician (Hayat Kamille), who kidnaps her. Dalia (May Calamawy), a junior detective, sympathizes with the couple, who the rest of the station believes has something to do with the disappearance.

Eight years later, the family lives at Larissa’s mother’s house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with their third child, Maud. Back in Egypt, a plane crashes, and Katie is found wrapped in bandages with etchings of a dead language. She is reunited with her family, despite her catatonia. How she survives this crash is never explained.

Once home, Katie’s behavior changes rapidly. She repeatedly hurts herself and escapes her room. Charlie is determined to figure out what’s wrong with her without the help of a medical professional, yet another plot contrivance.

He contacts an archaeology professor about the strange writing on the bandages Katie was found in. It is here that we meet the villain of the movie for the first time — the demon Nasmaranian — though we never learn about his backstory.

Nasmaranian is kept at bay through the process of ritual mummification where scripture is inscribed into the skin, allowing him to possess the host. As the bandages and skin are removed, Nasmaranian gains more power, which is why Katie is constantly hurting herself.

Charlie and Larissa are left to fight Katie’s turning while protecting Maud and Sebastián.

You’d think that in a movie called “The Mummy,” there’d be a lot more of the actual mummy involved. Instead, it’s just another supernatural horror with a couple off-handed references to what’s implied to be Egyptian mythology. The majority of the film doesn’t even take place in Egypt. There’s nothing connecting the two except for the title.

Where I will give Cronin his flowers is with the practical effects. Where the 1999 version feels campy and family-friendly, this one leans into the gore; the cinematography is visceral and well done. Watching Katie peel her own skin off made me, a massive horror-lover, wince and look away. 

Seeing guests unknowingly eat deviled eggs that we watched Katie spit blood into turned my stomach. The theater audience let out an audible groan when Charlie and Larissa tried to cut off Katie’s gnarled toenails, leaving her with open wounds. 

This film is gross, and I mean that in a good way. It’s tasteful with what gruesome images it chooses to present the audience with, spacing them out so that it doesn’t lose its dramatic effect. Cronin doesn’t only focus on the bloody and disgusting, which has each moment of it feel like a punch in the gut.

However, this doesn’t make up for the poor execution. It simply isn’t clear what Cronin was trying to accomplish. The ending of Charlie sacrificing himself implies that the overarching theme is the strength of familial love, but the utter disregard that Sebastián is shown refutes that.

If the message serves as a warning against stealing the artifacts of other cultures, like the original, then why doesn’t the plot revolve around a physical object? The film is confusing and scattered.

Perhaps most damning of all is the fact that this remake is something you could never call the original: boring.

Email: [email protected] 

Related Stories:

— Reel Thoughts: ‘Faces of Death’ is a remake done right

— Reel Thoughts: ‘Roommates’ realistically depicts horror stories

— Reel Thoughts: ‘Lorne’ gives an entertaining glimpse of ‘Saturday Night Live’ creator