Review: “Lee Cronin’s ‘Hamunaptra’ is more a passion project than embalming by committee.”

How is Lee Cronin doing? Are you okay. You know, we’re still making movies. This is his third novel. Someone – maybe it was Lee Cronin himself, but probably not – wanted us to know that his latest project, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, is more than just a mummy movie. Certainly not what you might imagine. A dead man in bandages, some creepy hieroglyphs, maybe Brendan Fraser. This isn’t that mummy movie. This is “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.”

We remain vague about what that proprietary credit means. Cronin’s previous film was Evil Dead Lies, a sequel that focused on the mushy game plan that Fede Alvarez envisioned in his 2013 reimagining of Sam Raimi’s gory comedy. At a time when horror seems to be unearthing a particularly rich vein (we even saw an Oscar win for The Unforgettable Witch in Weapons ), Lee Cronin represents the safe, old-fashioned dutiful stewardship of getting through the work of a typical night out.

There are worse sins in the world. And the best way to introduce an ancient Egyptian curse is through a prologue that looks very similar to the one in “The Exorcist.” Who is the woman with the creepy smile beckoning a young girl at the edge of the garden? Doesn’t matter. The child went missing, and eight years later, her American family still feels the loss since moving to suburban New Mexico. Charlie (Jack Reynor), a TV reporter, his haunted wife Larissa (Laia Costa), and their two semi-surly children, Maud (Billy Roy) and Sebastian (Shilo Molina).

But when their precious Katie (the game’s Natalie Grace) somehow returns to them, with wrinkled, dry skin and jagged toenails in a near-catatonic state that would make a peditext shriek, it’s hard to blame them for feeling euphoric. Working from his own screenplay, Cronin navigates the plot’s gaping holes and, while the Doctor may have something on his mind here, gets to the good stuff with a family at home and a live-in demon resting in a bedroom in cringe-worthy close quarters.

“Lee Cronin’s ‘Hamunaptra’ works best as a variation on Ari Aster’s breakout film, ‘Hereditary,’ a smoother, less sinful piece of work, with Grace’s Katie, prone to jaw-clacking clicks and distant glances, and Milly Shapiro’s hypnotic tartness as the doomed emcee.” By the end, the situation becomes more obvious, with the wheelchair floating in the air and the wheelchair flying over the ceiling, which I actually like more, but it’s because of the juicy gore, Katie’s skin peeling off in the sheets. She goes to town with her teeth.

All of these moments are suitable for audience groans, and there’s some fun bad cinema here to latch onto — and that’s when Cronin isn’t moving the action back to Egypt, pulling the strings of a low-powered mystery involving a one-dimensional Cairo detective (May Karamawy) seeking the root of the problem. Why bring in a fat archeology professor (Mark Mitchinson) if you’re going to give him just one scene? He’s the kind of character who usually makes it to the big denouement.

The film is mired in a confusing mess of references. It’s a possession thriller, and along with the expected mouth-to-mouth vomiting, it’s also about to show us some grainy video footage akin to “The Ring” or “Bring Her Back.” Ironically, an exotic, honest-to-goodness mummy movie (the first one was released in 1932 in the wake of the worldwide frenzy over King Tut’s tomb) makes a lot of sense now that America has wandered into an exotic desert.

Did you have that in mind at some point? Just ask Lee Cronin. This is his movie and these are his mummy issues.