Lee Cronin's The Mummy

I had high hopes for this, but boy was I disappointed... Instead of getting Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff or even Arnold Vosloo - we get a modern day "Carrie" with a few bandages and a rehash of the "Azazel" story - only this time with a sarcophagus and lots of rusty chains. We begin when the young daughter of "Charlie" (Jack Reynor) and "Larissa" (Laia Costa) is abducted by someone at the bottom of their garden who has been grooming her with candy bars at their Cairo home. Despite the best efforts of the police, there proves little that can be done and so the family relocate back to the USA and get on with raising their other two children. Then, out of the blue, "Det. Zaki" (May Calamawy) calls to say she has been found after an aeroplane crashed in the desert. Catatonic, the young girl (Natalie Grace) is brought home but swiftly we realise that all is not well and that when things begin to go bump in the night, some malevolence becomes apparent. What could possibly happen next? Well, sadly, there isn't the slightest hint of jeopardy about any of that as the visual effects designers go into overdrive and the writers head back to the pub. There simply isn't anything here that is remotely scary nor that does any justice to the ancient Egyptian mythology that could have better underpinned this mystery had Lee Cronin actually taken some trouble to build on that richness instead of sticking with the typical family panicky melodrama, albeit entertainingly augmented with some modern-day false teeth. There is the slightest of twists at the denouement that did make me smile - until I realised that might also signal sequel, and then I left to go home and watch a film that actually evokes something of the eerie and the mystical from this ancient culture. At least she wasn't a doll!

We can all just say that this is Evil Dead, right? I mean, it is, in everything but name, with some flimsy other story tacked on over it. It is shot like Evil Dead, its dialogue fits the Evil Dead, the narrative is Evil Dead. It just happens to not be Evil Dead. And it is all the worse for it. Because it is NOT Evil Dead, and instead tries to say something else, but gets bogged down in its format, and becomes this bland, uninteresting goop. It is proficient, sure, but it is almost desperate, and it is not engaging, and certainly not fun.