I’m sure there are some dumbasses out there like me who thought initially this was a remake of the 1999 movie of the same name starring none other than the OG himself, Brendan Fraser. That was such a classic and awesome movie that I’ve watched many, many times. Are they really going to remake it? Wait, why is this dude’s name, Lee Cronin, attached to the movie title? Is it to let viewers know that he’s the director making the remake? Alas, no, I learned this is a standalone and separate movie. They thought including the dude’s name in the title would make that obvious, but my first thought, again, was that a dude named Lee Cronin is remaking the The Mummy movie. I mean, maybe they could have given it a different name or something? Why reuse the same name as the original and potentially soil it? Your movie better be so damn good to warrant this privilege. The movie poster’s catch phrase is that some things are meant to stay buried. Maybe they meant this movie.

This movie is not all that bad, but it’s really just your typical horror movie with nothing really standing out. I actually found out why towards the end. With a run time of about two hours and fifteen minutes, it definitely overstayed its welcome. The first thirty minutes felt like just the introduction alone. So some dead, ancient, and mummified terror has been unleashed, and a family needs to find a new host. They kidnap a young girl, do what they have to do, and when she returns eight years later, she’s a completely changed person. I mean, okay, sure. Not the most original, but I’m thinking they would try many different things to make this angle work. But no, they don’t. The entirety of the movie consists of the returned girl being stuck at home in a wheelchair and terrorizing their family members while, of course, her dad tries to figure out just what the heck happened to her.

The red flag came when Katie started doing the whole arched back, possessed thing in bed. I was like, please do not turn it into ‘that’ kind of movie. PLEASE DO NOT. Then of course, and I mean of fricking course, she’s able to all of a sudden move with the flexibility and speed of a cheetah and start crawling and running around the house. Once she started eating the bugs, I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. Like, really? In fact, I was shocked the family didn’t bring in a priest to attempt an exorcism with the direction the movie was headed. Oh, and did I mention that whole creepy crawling upside down the house scene straight out of Hereditary? The reason why it worked so well in Hereditary is due to its subtleness. That scene was not expected from what I remembered. Here, there is no subtleness, and so that scene didn’t hit as hard.

Then comes the ending. This is where it rankled me the most. There was something odd maybe around the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. That whole fight scene between the family and Katie seems very familiar. Like pretty much everything about it. And then it hit me. James fricking Wan. His cookie cutter Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V template for a horror movie has its stamp all over this, and when the ending credits rolled, I was right. I just knew something stunk with the movie, and it was towards the end that really gave it away. Well, at least he didn’t utilize cheap and loud jump scares throughout the movie, so at least there’s that. I think I counted only one major one, so I guess that counts somewhat as a win for me. Anyway, they wasted so much time here. It would have been better if they spent more time talking about the Nasmaranian demon instead of just the five minutes it had. Hell, that would have made for a better movie title. I can see it just now, Lee Cronin’s The Nasmaranian.