Director Lee Cronin Takes Us Through the Goriest Scenes in His Mummy Movie

Explained Cronin: “I wanted to hide the monster in plain sight to begin with and for there to be enough doubt in the parents’ minds. Not even doubt, because they would do anything to care for their loved one and bring her home. I think even if she was covered in Karloff’s bandages, they still would have brought her home and tried to make her better, because they care for her and they love her. So yeah, that was actually quite fun, this idea that what you think is the skin, because it’s settled over time, actually starts to erode and prove to be something different, and is actually a second skin that’s containing both their daughter, the thing that they’ve really been searching for, but [also] a terrible evil at the same time.”

The Wake to End All Wakes

Arguably the wildest and most impactful sequence in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy occurs at Carmen’s wake, after an encounter with Katie leads Grandma to being thrown out of a window and fed on by coyotes (it’s a rough day for Carmen!). This scene stands out for how it just keeps escalating, with one shocking and gloriously disgusting thing happening after another. Where to begin? Well, the family’s youngest child – 8-year-old Maud (Billie Roy) – is now under Katie’s demonic sway and yanks out her own teeth, spitting blood onto deviled eggs that are then eaten by unknowing mourners. Next, Maud climbs into the open coffin, tearing open the stitching keeping her dead grandmother’s damaged mouth closed, pulls Carmen’s dentures out and puts them in her own bloody mouth, and uses them to bite Charlie. Then, Katie leaps into the coffin, chomping into Carmen’s corpse before the coffin tips over, sending them both spilling to the ground, at which point embalming fluid pours from Carmen’s body and Katie – ugh – eagerly licks the fluid up from the floor.

Even as a lifelong horror and makeup FX gore fan, that last moment actually made me a bit nauseous, which I told Cronin I found impressive, asking him if he came up with all of the various things that would occur in that wake scene gradually or all at once. Cronin replied: “It came in one very aggressive blast of thought, and it came from my own experience of experiencing a wake with a loved one. That is an important part of the process when somebody passes away, and it’s a particularly big thing in Irish culture. But it’s also traumatic when you reflect upon it on a personal level, because someone that you love is there, but they’re not there. They’re in a box, and the box is open, but you’re gonna have to put the lid on and put them in the ground. And these things do turn over in my mind, my own life experiences, and I thought I need to deal with this one, so I’m gonna try and create the craziest wake sequence that I can. And sometimes when I have those types of ideas, it does come in a bit of a blast.”

Throughout the film, it had been established that the aging Carmen was trying to hold onto her beauty the best she could, including wearing those dentures. Cronin explained: “The teeth aspect of that was always in my mind. I wanted there to be a payoff from that, because it just felt like, again, a cool moment from a genuinely personal experience. I’ll talk about that another day! But it was something that I’d connected with, and then with the wake, sometimes when you say all bets are off, it’s the type of scene that comes together [quick]. I refined it a bunch, and it was really difficult to shoot, but the bones of it were there from the get-go. And it’s probably my favorite sequence in the movie, or close to my favorite sequence, because it’s completely batshit crazy.”

I mentioned that while I was personally most grossed out by the embalming fluid bit, a woman next to me was conspicuously wretching at the blood-covered deviled eggs being eaten. Cronin chuckled, remarking that “I think the embalming fluid one is pretty wild, and the deviled eggs was one of those ones that was always there, but I never thought about it much in my mind. It’s funny how some things catch on, because a lot of people love that moment, but I never thought about it. But it is a story told in three parts, which is always important. And the blood spit on the deviled eggs is actually me spitting off camera, because everyone was trying and couldn’t quite get it right. I’m like, ‘Give me the blood bottle! Let’s go.’ I always get hands on when it comes to the blood and the sticky stuff.”

Family Blood Ties

As you can tell from reading the descriptions above, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy does not go easy on its three kid characters, who are right in the thick of it – with “it” often including gory mayhem – throughout the movie, much like the younger characters in Evil Dead Rise. Said Cronin: “If you’re telling a story about family, family often includes children, and if I’m trying to tell a horror story around a family, those children are probably going to be somewhat in the center of it.”

Cronin had noted in a previous interview with IGN’s Scott Collura that Poltergeist was one major influence on his Mummy movie, as far as a suburban family dealing with this supernatural threat, though he noted, “It’s funny, because in Poltergeist, in a lot of ways, the kids within that family don’t come under an enormous amount of threat. The older daughter just kind of vanishes and it’s talked about that she’s staying with friends. One of my favorite scenes in Poltergeist is the little son that just gets in a taxi. The parents don’t even walk him down to the taxi! They stand up in the doorway, and he slams the door and has to put his own bag in. But in my stories, yeah, the kids are always at the center of that whirlwind. And I think if I’m investing in trying to threaten family, then I’m also threatening innocence, and children are very reflective of that innocence I’m trying to corrupt and play around with on screen.”

Though poor Carmen certainly dies hard, the rest of the family does make it through, with Katie freed from her possession and the other kids released from their spells. And though Charlie offers up his own body as the next vessel for the Mummy in order to save his daughter, the final moments indicate that won’t be for long, as Larissa – joined by Egyptian detective Dalia (May Calamawy) – are going to use the woman who did this to Katie in the first place (Hayat Kamille) as the next person to hold this ancient evil inside them, thus freeing Charlie.