Tag: Lily Sullivan

Cinema Dispatch: Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Lee Cronin

I feel like it’s been a minute since we’ve had a really good Mummy movie. Sure, they tried with that Tom Cruise movie from a few years back, but when was the last time we had a movie about a Mummy that was genuinely creepy? Has it really been since the Hammer film from the late fifties that a Mummy movie was trying to be a suspenseful horror film and not an action comedy? Thankfully, we’ve got good ol’ Blumhouse to bring these old monsters to life with small budgets; necessitating creativity and atmosphere over flashy effects and endless spectacle. Does this put the Mummy back in its rightful place as a horror icon, or is this yet another failed attempt to make the concept relevant without Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, or Brendan Fraser? Let’s find out!!

Charlie (Jack Reynor) is an investigative reporter who’s been assigned to Cairo and brought his family along for the adventure. Of course, this being Egypt in a horror movie, one of their kids Katie (Emily Mitchell and Natalie Grace) is kidnapped and mummified. It’s not until eight years later that the sarcophagus is discovered and Katie is miraculously still alive, though seems to be in pretty rough shape. Unable to talk, walk, or even eat on her own, Charlie and his wife Larissa (Laia Costa) decide to take her home to the US and see if some bedrest will fix her horrifying condition. Needless to say that there’s more going on than just dehydration and sunburns, and things start to go wild as Katie awakens to whatever power the mummification had granted her. Why was Katie chosen to be mummified, and is there anything left of Katie now that she’s free from her bindings? What horrors will this family contend with in trying to save their daughter from whatever malevolent force is driving her? Is it just me, or does this sound nothing like a Mummy movie? Did an intern mix up a couple different scripts and no one even noticed?

“This plot thread has to lead somewhere! I just know it!!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Evil Dead Rise

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Evil Dead Rise and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Lee Cronin

Not to toot my own horn but I’m of the last generation to actually rent movies from video stores, and while I never had a cool indie place to find obscure classics, my local Blockbuster had a decent collection that included the first Evil Dead movie.  Needless to say that taking it home without any understanding of what I was getting myself into turned out to be a formative experience and I’ve had a soft spot for the franchise ever since.  Still, we’re over forty years removed from that first movie, and with sequels, remakes, video games, and even that TV show from a few years ago, it’s fair to say that you’ll need to do something quite different to crawl out from under the shadow of the original trilogy.  Can this latest take on the material hope to fill those massive shoes, or has it long since run its course, and are we left with the undead facsimile of what we once loved?  Let’s find out!!

Unlike the previous films which kept the action to either a cabin in the woods or a medieval kingdom, our story begins in the city of Los Angeles where Beth (Lily Sullivan) visits her sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three kids, Danny, Bridget, and Kassie (Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, and Nell Fisher) who are trying to make ends meet despite being kicked out of their apartment building in the coming days.  Fortune seems to favor this family however as an earthquake hits that rips open a secret bank vault beneath the building and Danny goes in to find a mysterious old book and some old records that they may be able to sell for a few bucks.  I mean if he had a chance to get it on eBay I’m sure he’d make a mint given how obsessive Evil Dead fans are, but sadly the book has other plans as the record contains the ancient incantation to summon the Deadites which finds a nice comfy home in Ellie and starts making things awkward for everyone.  Can this family survive the night and escape the clutches of this rampaging Deadite?  Does the book contain any clues on how to stop this, and are there chapters within it that we’ve never seen before?  Is anyone else a little perplexed at how much of a downer this seems like?  I don’t know; maybe there was a reason these movies were more about Ash than the lore?

“Give me some sugar, Baby!”     “Uh… maybe later?”
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