“I always think horror movies are best shared with the collective,” says Cronin, well-known to horror audiences for directing and writing the 2023 hit “Evil Dead Rise.” “You get that sense of movement and motion within a room when you get people screaming together, jumping together, popcorn flying at the same time.”
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. Produced by James Wan, Jason Blum and John Keville, the film stars Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, with Veronica Falcón.
Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/Dg8AzYx6Tsw
For Cronin, the creation of the monster in monster movies are of really great importance. “One of the things I knew is that I wanted to put this monster in full daylight and for the audience to experience and for the family to experience something unknown, something that’s there, something that seems off, but hasn’t fully revealed itself yet,” says the filmmaker. “The look of the monster was also very much inspired by the mystery in the story, and I love when things like that happen, rather than just saying, ‘Hey, let’s make it scary. Let’s make it creepy.’ There’s a purpose behind all the choices that we made. There’s a purpose behind the color her skin is when we first meet her and how it develops. It might seem like she’s getting healthier, where in reality she’s actually starting to decay in a different way. So, all of that – the various stages throughout the movie that we wanted to explore with the monstrous look – was pretty meticulously planned out from the start.”Cronin also shares what he thinks makes for a great and effective horror scene. “There has to be something familiar about it, or at least for me, that’s what I’m always drawn to,” he says. “So, if I look back at my last movie, ‘Evil Dead Rise,’ there’s the infamous cheese grater scene, for example. I knew I wanted something domestic to be involved in the scene and to shock people, and I walked into my kitchen and hey, there’s the cheese grater. And it’s like, yeah, everybody has one in the kitchen. Everyone has a frame of context. This movie has some equally gnarly and unusual actions that take place, but again, always around slightly domestic things.”
The director is excited to take movie audiences for another ride and experience his latest horror film. “I try and think of the movies that I make and the stories that I tell as some sort of dark ride or roller coaster,” says Cronin. And sometimes it’s silence, and sometimes it’s just clicking towards the corner… but sometimes you also just need to be hit very dramatically in the face and in your mind with something that completely raises your heart rate and changes how you’re feeling about the experience at the time. And, yeah, the power of a frightful image is something really special and unique that I always love to play with and use to bring the audience on a ride and to entertain as well.”
Find out what terrifying things await horror fans when “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” starts showing only in cinemas April 15. #LeeCroninsTheMummy
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures