This is really an Evil Dead film with a layer of bandages and plot reliant on each and every character taking the idiot ball and running with it as far and long as they can. It is a thing of awe, to see this level of just sheer, abject dumb. Scientists in Prometheus, dumb. For far too long with a rather indulgent runtime. And dumb is no stranger to the genre. It's a common trope, and valid critique, but this is dumb in service of a film with the backbone of inflicting horrors upon a child.
That’s the core question behind all the marketing, ‘What happened to Katie’ and the answer is: nothing great. It is an exploitative trope but a genre staple, and the worst horror the movie presents. Not just in what atrocity might be inflicted, but the peripheral damage upon family and loved ones. The enduring trauma and grappling with the unanswered what-ifs. The movie touches upon the grief and trauma, then the agony of caretaking for a debilitated loved one. But that is sidelined once we get to the possession plot, which follows predictable beats and remixes some with an unhealthy dose of dumb choices.
There’s plenty of disquieting elements and dark implication in this film before delving into supernatural horrors. Cronin’s affinity for grotesque body horror is fully on display and will definitely satisfy. Before things escalate, a number of scenes will make audiences squirm and cringe with an odd, unsettling plausibility with regards to flesh over time merged with bindings. Then, as mentioned, this is an Evil Dead film, with all that entails: gratuitous gore, shocking outlandish antics, entities that exist for malice and spite. Once things escalate, Katie and company might as well be deadites wreaking their chaotic madness, and the movie abandons the pretense this actually has anything to do with Egypt or mummies.
I am admittedly hyper-critical here. I love Egypt, mummies and the mythology, and I keep hoping for a genuinely authentic mummy horror movie. I'll even take Chilean, Peruvian, or Chinese variants, I just wanted the equivalent folk-horror film, where the 'folk' means an actual culture and its beliefs, not a sarcophagus-shaped excuse for a possession movie that could've been set anywhere. This movie borders on cultural appropriation, thinly masking any given Judeo-Christian demon film with a layer of pseudo-hieroglyphics and misrepresenting a culture’s belief structure. But with all these elements brushed aside, much as the director himself seems to have done, this is a very decent Evil Dead film.
There is irony in a film about an undead entity, consistently not dying. This film has at least 3 discernible endings, full-stop endings, and then the film keeps going for more. And even with stacked endings, the film feels unfinished. We certainly find out what happened to Katie, but it all belongs in another franchise. As a Mummy movie I’d rate this a D-, as an Evil Dead film a solid: