“Lee Cronin’s the Mummy” has strong production values for a horror film. These include good visual effects, gross-out body images, and a powerful score with superb foley effects. Where the movie fails is in having a poorly crafted story and poorly written screenplay.

The tale begins in Egypt. A family is driving in their car on a road trip. The father in the passenger seat is trying to encourage his children to sing along to the radio. The mother driving the car shuts off the radio abruptly and says that the music was giving her a headache.

Arriving home, the group discovers that one of the pet birds in a cage is lying in a pool of what looked to me like black fluid. The mother (Hayat Kamille), billed in the credits as “the Magician”, and father go downstairs to a crypt where an obelisk-like coffin is. Using machinery to raise the lid, the Magician looks inside. Her light goes out and when it returns, a fleeting image is viewed of something macabre. Meanwhile, her husband is caught up in the mechanisms and killed.

Segue to a home in Cairo where Charlie (Jack Reynor) and his pregnant wife Larissa (Laia Costa) Cannon live. He is helping his daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) to learn International Morse Code. A video comes on the TV of Charlie talking about Egyptian water issues. He is mocked by his children, including his son Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams) for his hand movements in the clip.

Later, as their Mom prepares to leave, Charlie gets a call confirming that he has a TV job in New York City. Excited, they discover that Sebastian has parachuted one of Katie’s dolls off a balcony so that the toy is damaged. A sibling fight ensues. Charlie repairs the doll and Katie goes outside to play after expressing anger at her Dad and brother.

In a garden-like yard, dense with vegetation, Katie goes through the contents of her box. A voice appears at the fence. Katie has had a friend named Layla who gave her treats. Layla was the daughter of the Magician, however, who now entertains Katie with magic tricks. She gives Katie a nectarine, apologizing for what she is about to do. After biting the nectarine, a bug goes into Katie’s mouth and she collapses.

Charlie finds the candy wrappers given by Layla to Katie and goes outside to investigate. He sees a robed figure fleeing with Katie. He races after his daughter and her abductor. A huge dust storm arises and he is forced to give up.

At the police station, the parents are suspected as possibly having killed their daughter. A young detective, Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy), is translating from Arabic to English.

Flash forward eight years. A plane crash occurs in rural Egypt. In the wreckage is the same obelisk-like casket in the Magician’s house. It is sent to a lab. When it is opened, the investigators remove long strips with letters on them. Suddenly the figure inside comes to life.

Back in the States, Albuquerque to be exact, Charlie is working at some local TV station. Larissa is involved in medical work. They live in a mansion-like house in the boondocks. On a car trip, Charlie gets a call that Katie (Natalie Grace) is alive in Egypt! But what is wrong with her?

So first, the positives. The body gore was vividly portrayed and indeed gross. There were some truly scary scenes and some good jump starts. I found an ingested scorpion giving Zaki an involuntary tracheotomy particularly inventive.

Another positive was the portrayal of the Cannon home in New Mexico. It had good interior design and some nice hidden corridors that facilitated the action. I also liked the coyotes, who looked like wolves though, which were at the gate.

The Egyptian ritual on the VHS tape was suitably creepy and indeed scary. I liked the wrappings with the letters on them.

The score is superb. It is spooky and eerie. The foley effects of thumping are positively frightening and loud.

What I didn’t like is how stupid the family in this picture was. They go to Egypt to pick up their daughter. She looks like a cross between Chuckie and Linda Blair at her worst in “The Exorcist.” She cannot speak except in guttural outbursts, has clawed her own skin, and has uncontrollable jerks and spasms.

So what they do? They bring her to their remote home in New Mexico to care for her themselves. What can they not figure out? She almost immediately hits Grandma in the nose and bloodies her. They have to sedate her to control her. But no matter how crazy she acts, they don’t take her to a care facility.

The best the father can do is listen to her teeth click in Morse Code. Then he goes to a professor who of course is an expert on Egyptology and ancient curses. The mother cuts Katie’s toenails until her skin comes off her leg. Just a day in the life, I guess.

In essence, this comes down to terror in one house over time. Now “Abigail” was set in one house throughout the film, but some of the characters had brains enough to know that they were in trouble. The plot of “Abigail” was also very clever.

Here the Egyptology aspect is poorly defined. If this demon were truly a menace to the world, why is it staying in one house? The movie, overlong at 2 hours 15 minutes, takes too much time to reveal what happened to make Katie the way she is. When you do find out you don’t care about this family anymore. Too little action is set in Egypt and too much in New Mexico.

Without giving away specific details or spoilers, I will say that I was disturbed by the way an eight-year-old was put in peril in the Egyptian ritual. It is a fine line between legitimate story portrayal and making something that seems exploitative. In this film, I think that it is the latter.

Another gripe I had about this movie is my usual one about defying the laws of physics, physiology, and anatomy. Here humans have this demonic entity causing all sorts of damage and they live.

I do believe that it is hard to make a good horror movie. It is nevertheless quite a shock to watch a horror film and have such conflicting feelings. I admired so much of the quality of the production values and absolutely detested the story.

Two and a half out of five stars.

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.

Cast: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, with Veronica Falcón.
Written and directed by: Lee Cronin