In Lee Cronin's The Mummy, the young daughter of a journalist disappears into the desert without a trace—eight years later, the broken family is shocked when she is returned to them, as what should be a joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare.
The must-see horror movie is now available on Digital, and ahead of its 4K UHD release on July 14, we caught up with writer and director Lee Cronin to learn more about bringing The Mummy back to the big screen.
Having cut his teeth with numerous award-winning short films, the Irish filmmaker put himself on the map with his sophomore feature, Evil Dead Rise. It achieved critical and commercial success, grossing $150 million for Warner Bros. at the global box office and earned Cronin the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Director.
With Lee Cronin's The Mummy, he puts a bold new spin on the titular monster by creating a whole new twisted mythology. During our interview, he explained his approach to building that lore, bringing an Evil Dead vibe to The Mummy, and the now-infamous scorpion scene.
We also hear from Cronin on the movie's surprisingly optimistic ending, learning why he decided to head down that route after the horror that precedes it. Finally, the filmmaker opens up on potential plans to expand on The Mummy mythology with prequels, sequels, or spin-offs.
Check out our full interview with the Lee Cronin's The Mummy helmer below.
I love your background with the Evil Dead head, and it was a lot of fun seeing that vibe come to The Mummy. What was your inspiration for putting this new spin on such a classic movie monster?
I think it was just a really intriguing opportunity to do something quite different and unexpected with the traditional understanding and thoughts around what a mummy movie has been or could be. That kind of approach is always intriguing to me. It started with a conversation with James Wan about making a mummy movie, which wasn't something that grabbed me right away. But when he talked about maybe trying to make the most terrifying one that's ever been made, that drew me in a little bit further. And then I started to get inventive with a storyline. I liked the idea of taking what's expected and something that's historical, but bringing it into a much more contemporary kind of context.
I love the gore that we saw in Evil Dead Rise, and that factors into this film, as well. Gore needs a compelling story as well, which your films have had, but what appeals to you as a filmmaker about really pushing the limits of that kind of violence?
I think you mentioned story. A lot of the time it's to do with what the story actually is about. Ultimately not every story calls for that level of intensity or that type of horror spectacle that includes gore and violence. It's funny — I'm not a person that's actually particularly into violence. But it has been a necessary tool I've used when I want to tell these stories about the destruction of family. Family being the most sacred thing, something that's central to so many of our lives. And it's a really fertile place to start to pick apart. But I think it only ever has value when it has a real impact on the characters that are within the story. And in this case, the set of characters that had already experienced the worst possible thing that could happen to them, and then I step in and I make it worse again.
At the same time, you're building this new mythology with a character like the Magician and what it means to be a Mummy beyond the stereotypical monster in bandages. How challenging was it to create that, figure out what it was going to look like, and then bring it to the film?
Yeah, it was definitely a challenge because there's the obvious pathways in terms of what people think an audience might think when it comes to what a mummy is. If you stop somebody on the street, they might reference a movie or something they saw in a museum. And I still knew it needed to be something incredibly old. But I also needed there to be a lore that allowed for the recycling of that evil in some way that could give me this inn that I was interested in about a missing kid that's returned home and is discreetly the mummy at first. But as the psychological layers start to unravel around the family, so does the revelation of the monster. So one of the big challenges really was creating a look for a monster that allowed it to exist kind of in the daylight, be uncanny, be present, but also transform into an even worse nightmare as the story progressed.
You've got Natalie Grace, who undergoes that transformation, and she's a young actress. How was it working with her? You really put her through the wringer with what her character goes through throughout the course of this story.
Yeah, she went through the wringer both off camera and on camera because Natalie was a trooper. She had a really big prosthetics process that she had to go through daily. Not that she would be there every single day of the shoot, but for someone going through that level of prosthetics, it probably felt like every day because she could be anywhere from five and a half to seven hours in the makeup chair. But I think she used that sense of isolation — because you're on set, everybody's shooting, the crew is there, the cast are there, and she's further away with her team being prepared for being brought onto camera.
So every time she walked onto set, she felt a great opportunity to do the best work she could because of what she'd gone through that day, because of what she had put forward for her character and also what was required because she's the scary heart of the story. And from the moment I met her she was very in tune with what the job would be. It was something she hadn't experienced before. I was very upfront with her about how challenging that would be. But she wanted to utilize all of that energy and all of that effort to make sure that she performed almost everything that you see in the movie and it's a real testament to her and what she brought on screen.
So much has been said about the scorpion scene. I think that's the one that's really got the most visceral reaction from people in theaters, but the process of figuring that out and then pulling that vision off on screen — it must be super challenging?
Yeah, I think when you're in prep on a genre movie like this, there's always five or six things that you're talking about for a long time and trying to figure out how you achieve it and how you pull that off. Like the toenail sequences or the pedicure scene was of a similar ilk where it just took a lot of trial and error and research. And I try and be as practical as I possibly can in so many areas. The scorpion features a couple of times in the movie, both through her and then also later on with Granny and with Zachi and with Carmen. So it was just weirdly one of the things we talked about a lot — getting the scale of something like that right, getting the look of it right.
We had real scorpions. We obviously also used digital scorpions for certain parts where it wouldn't be possible to do what we did. But the grounding for everything was as real as possible. So step one was bringing in our animal handler with scorpions so we could start to investigate. And there were actually some more scorpion scenes that didn't make the final cut of the movie. There was a good bit more scorpion play in the film. So yeah, they played really well. I can't remember their names, but our different scorpions on the set all had names and performed extremely well.
I'd love to know your take on the ending as well. We get quite an optimistic, almost happy ending for Charlie, and the Magician obviously gets her just desserts after everything these characters have been through. Was it important for you to end on not necessarily an upbeat note, but maybe just a hopeful note for these characters after everything they go through?
Yeah, it was an ongoing conversation about where to end the story because there are quite a lot of layers to what's going on. And it's a story not just about the Cannon family, but also about the magician and her family and what she was trying to do was also protect her family just like Charlie and Lissa want to protect their kids and the unit that is their family. One thing that was really important was the power of the sacrifice that Charlie makes, the burden of guilt that he carried throughout. But then it was also considered that at the very core of this story it is about an evil and the very nature of the mechanics in the story — and that it can't be defeated. It can only be contained.
I remember kind of saying like if an exorcism didn't work, this is the final last line of defense. If something was unexorcisable, what would you do or what could be done? And that's where the lore builds from. So in some respects you point to the magician and say well that's actually our big bad behind the scenes because she was the puppet master. She was the one that pulled the strings. She's the one that led to Katie being taken and opening up this enormous wound within the family.
So it did feel, I think with horror movies especially with a horror movie that can go pretty hard at times and it is there to entertain but nonetheless it still goes for the jugular on many occasions, that giving the audience — whether it's upbeat or otherwise — a reason to cheer, even if that's a small cheer internally, just for there to be that little bit of catharsis and release after everything that they've gone through with the family. Especially ideally if people connect with that family they want to feel some sort of relief, albeit in this movie it's still delivered with a kind of a sinister sideways smile that maintains plenty of evil.
It is a fantastic ending, and you have created this new Mummy lore. So do you see sequel potential, prequel potential, or any ways to maybe expand the mythology after this movie?
I think it's definitely possible. I think the mythology is rich because it's about something. What I like about the movie is it's in the here and now, but it's about a decision that many, many generations of a family previously made and passed down along through their family until the magician is the one kind of in control with the responsibility. So I think it's referenced in the movie about it being the 82nd mummification ritual in terms of carrying it over these many generations. So I think there is definitely the possibility and the world was built with that in mind. I think the character of Zachi is really interesting as well in terms of what she has uncovered and discovered because I would look at it as being there's many types of evil. There's many types of demons. So what's to say that other missing people haven't vanished because of a similar fate as the one Katie was put to or people in the past? So there's definitely a world that stretches back thousands of years that would be ripe for the picking.
Lee Cronin's The Mummy is now available on digital and will be available on 4K UHD on July 14.