Brendan Fraser isn’t coming to save us this time…
Details surrounding Lee Cronin’s take on The Mummy have been literally kept mum thus far, leaving fans to wonder just how the film will distinguish itself from the legacy of the much beloved Brendan Fraser trilogy, or the ill-fated Tom Cruise action horror that one-shotted Universal’s Dark Universe franchise plans.
Today brought answers in the form of a disturbing first trailer for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy – the director’s feature follow up to 2023’s impressively mean-spirited Evil Dead Rise.
Horror connoisseurs James Wan and Jason Blum are producing, meaning there are hopefully some Conjuring-level scares and Saw-level gore in store for this franchise’s resurrection.
The story unravelled in the trailer follows a young family who receives a call from the U.S. Embassy informing them that their daughter, who disappeared on a holiday in Cairo eight years ago, has been found. Whether she’s actually alive or not is another question…
Katie, the daughter, has suffered a fate that would send any claustrophobic into immediate cardiac arrest – she’s spent the past eight years trapped inside a 3000-year-old sarcophagus and has emerged as some type of human-mummy hybrid. Horror ensues as the family reunite and reckon with how (or if) they can save their daughter.
Cronin’s take envisions blood-curling visuals and body horror design that promises to lurch through your nightmares for years to come – paper-thin, sallow skin; fingernails grown into claws; limbs that contort at sickening angles.
More so, it’s exciting to see Cronin begin to establish himself as a horror visionary – the new trailer featuring a split diopter shot that instantly takes you back to how the director framed his Deadites in Evil Dead Rise.
The film stars Midsommar’s Jack Reynor, alongside Laia Costa, May Calamawy, and Natalie Grace as the mummified Katie. If the trailer, alongside horrified test screening reactions are anything to go by, it seems like the franchise is back in business.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy will be released on April 17 in Australia.
