Review: Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

If you were to dissect this movie, you would find all of the necessary parts to have a legitimately good film.  A creepy 'possessed' performance from Natalie Grace as Katie; Egyptian lore adding some credibility to go with the otherworldly elements (whether or not this lore is real - probably not - is inconsequential); solid performances from Jack Raynor as Katie's dad and May Calamawy as the detective assigned to Katie's disappearance; there are even a few sequences that build tension in interesting ways.  However, as this movie is currently assembled, it just doesn't quite work despite having all of the parts necessary to succeed.

The movie follows the Cannon family: parents Charlie and Larissa (Reynor and Laia Costa) and children Katie, Seb, and Maudie (Grace, Shylo Molina, and Billie Roy, with younger versions of Katie and Seb played by Emily Mitchell and Dean Williams).  Before Maudie is born, Katie disappears while the family is living in Egypt.  Eight years later, the Cannons are contacted after Katie is found inside an ancient sarcophagus, and they bring her home (now in Albuquerque) to help her recover - in possibly the most 'this would only happen in a movie' scene.  Things quickly get weird.

One thing about this movie is that it is in no rush at any point during its 132 minute runtime.  In the early going, it is forgivable since it allows the viewer to get to know the family pre and post-abduction, but once Katie is brought back into the story it definitely should've gotten to the meat much faster than it does.  I know I sound like a broken record on this point, but this movie probably could've cut a good 30 minutes out of it and not lost anything of note, which would've only helped with the pacing.

This movie is also incredibly gross.  Director Lee Cronin is very obviously a fan of movies like Braindead or Drag Me to Hell and he leans into it in such a way that I, a veteran of gross-out horror movies, found myself turning away from the screen.  Whereas there is a tongue-in-cheek giddiness to the mentioned movies, Cronin chose to play it much straighter in this one and it suffers for that decision.  It doesn't matter how good the effects are if the audience is turning away in disgust.

What does work in the movie is the little subversions to the standard tropes: having the dad be the one to realize things are going sideways first is a nice change of pace (and I'm sure Reynor would like to be remembered for roles other than the one in Midsommar), and the cop side of the plot takes a few turns that I won't spoil, but felt like a welcome reprieve from other, dumber movies.

It would be hard for me to recommend this movie to other people.  Whatever good parts it has - and there are several good parts, including a scene with Katie's grandmother that might be the most effective of the movie - the pacing issues and vulgarity would outweigh them for most people.

A frustrating, though competent movie.

5 out of 10

Review: Pumpkinhead (1988)

I'll admit to going into this movie with a certain preconceived notion of what to expect, both plotwise and qualitywise.  Not the best way to go into any movie, but especially one such as this: this isn't some low budget, substandard piece of horror media, it's the directorial debut of the legendary Stan Winston!  This movie comes with pedigree, and it clearly shows some thought and effort put into it.

To summarize, the movie follows Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen), who goes to a witch (Florence Schauffler) to get revenge on the teenagers who accidentally killed his son Billy (Matthew Hurley).  This summons the titular Pumpkinhead, who then goes after the teenagers.  There's more to the plot than that, but that summary is spoilery enough, so I will leave it there.

Now, I won't say this is a perfect first effort from Winston (he would only direct one other film after this, mostly focusing on the special effects work that made him famous) but I will give credit where credit is due: He does a fine job.  There are some interesting shot compositions, the film moves along at a good pace, and the creature design is top notch.

Which, this movie was always going to live and die off of the creature design, especially with a title such as Pumpkinhead.  It certainly is evocative of a pumpkin, while still being different enough to not be corny.  I'd probably have removed the tail, but otherwise Winston uses his trademark skills to craft a thoroughly unique monster.  I don't know that I'd list it among the greatest movie monsters ever created, but I wouldn't argue against someone including it in theirs.

The bulk of the acting falls on Henriksen, who has made a career out of these sort of heightened genre roles, and he brings his usual workmanlike charisma to the performance.  It's a much deeper performance than you'd expect in this sort of movie, but a good one.  The various teenagers have occasional interesting shading (Steve, played by Joel Hoffman, is probably the richest role, though the actor does struggle slightly with the hard shifts that the character has to make) but mostly exist to be menaced by Pumpkinhead.

The set design for this movie is adequate, though it felt to me like they leaned a little too much into making Appalachian housing look like something out of the 1800s, but maybe it was accurate (I have doubts to that).  The score works well enough, though there are a few parts where I found it somewhat distracting, mostly in the early scenes.

I think the overall problem with this film is that it is just okay.  Nothing is particularly terrible, but it also lacks anything truly spectacular.  It's just a solidly done genre film that is probably underappreciated, but not criminally so.

Would I recommend this?  I would, it's a good 'starter' horror movie: enough scares and kills without being overly violent or gory.  I probably wouldn't suggest it to anyone who prefers more hardcore horror though.

6.5 out of 10

Review: The Shining (1980)

Sometimes, you know a review is going to have strong disagreements with it before you even begin to write it.  I knew this would be the case for my review of The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, before I gave it my third, and likely final, watch.  For I have believed for years that if this movie did not have Kubrick's name attached, it would be held in the same esteem as Needful Things or The Langoliers.  And I'm not one of those 'this is a good movie but a bad adaptation' cowards: this is a poorly directed, poorly acted mess of a movie that, at this point, I think people are afraid to call out for being as bad as it is.

I'm sure I have lost quite a few people just with that opening paragraph, but I stand by it.  This movie does not work: it sits in one emotional register the entire time, gets boring because of that, and rests on approximately two and a half good scenes to carry it through its two and a half hour runtime.

I realize Kubrick has his cult that is more than happy to explain every last unnecessary detail, but no amount of interpretive chicanery will convince me that everything Kubrick did here was on purpose.  '[X] didn't exist when the movie was set, so that means Kubrick was making a commentary about [Y]' - no he didn't.  He just made a mistake, like any other filmmaker, stop tripping over yourself trying to explain it.  Just because he took a 5 second shot and stretched it out to 15 doesn't mean anything significant was included, it means Kubrick and editor Ray Lovejoy are bad at pacing their movie.

'Nicholson was amazing!'  Sorry, but no he wasn't.  He played a single note the entire film, and half the time he whiffed it.  And I say that as someone who is generally a fan!  He's not the worst performance in the film by any stretch, but he has so many other better performances that it almost feels obscene to call this one of his best.  The only truly good performance in this movie (in a sizable part, I should note - some of the extras do a good job and I don't want to denigrate them) comes from Shelley Duvall, and I feel half bad giving that compliment since she was basically tortured by the director during the filming of it.

Giving the film what little credit it deserves, I will mention the two effective scenes: Danny (Danny Lloyd) coming across the two girl ghosts and seeing flashes of their murder, and then Wendy's (Duvall) panicked flailing in the restroom as Jack uses an axe to break through the door.  I only give half credit to the scene where Jack goes into room 237, but only half because I am not sure if it is genuinely unsettling people, or if they (like the filmmaker) are just doing an 'old people are gross' sleight of hand.

Outside of that, nothing else is of note.  Literally, those scenes are what permeated the cultural zeitgeist and its because they are literally the only good scenes the movie has to offer.  'But the typewriting scene!' - Sorry, that wasn't scary, it was just the first interesting thing to happen after 20 minutes of nothingness, plus the score gets annoyingly loud.  Also, The Simpsons parody of it goes 10 times harder while also being funny.  'What about the picture at then end?'  I'm sorry, Kubrick's lame feint towards ambiguousness is just further proof that he didn't know what he was doing with this movie.  'What about the murder of Dick?'  How dare you, I am gay!  Wait, you mean Dick Hallorann... Again, you only find it interesting because the lead up to it was so boring that the sudden movement and increase in scoring confused you into thinking something worthwhile happened on screen.

This movie is one long exercise in straining your patience, then giving you the most pedestrian of action, and expecting you to feel rewarded because something finally happened.  And because people think Kubrick is a genius (I am not so convinced) they use cognitive dissonance to convince themselves there is meaning in the mess.  There isn't.  The movie is bad, and I would encourage you to spend your time watching better ones.

I don't recommend this movie to people, because I generally like the people I recommend movies to.  However, I know other people speak highly of this movie and I guess I am happy that other people can enjoy it, even if I am greatly confused by it.

 

3 out of 10, and Shelley Duvall is carrying the bulk of that score. 

Review: Lake Placid (1999)

A few days ago, while reviewing Piranha 3D, I mentioned that it was a trashy film.  While implied, I'll go ahead and directly state that it was well-directed trashy film.  It knew what it was, and played to that expectation and did it very well.  It might be odd to start a review for one movie by talking about another, but I feel the need to contrast the two movies because Lake Placid is also playing to the cheap seats, and is somewhat competently directed, but isn't nearly as effective.

The biggest sin of this movie is the script.  Written by David E. Kelley, it lacks all of the trademarks of his more successful TV works, and I find it unsurprising that he didn't write another movie screenplay after this one.  It's meant to be comedic and is filled with 'funny' lines, but precious few of them are, and any gold spun from this straw script comes from the efforts of the actors.  Really, the fact that the movie is watchable at all is due to their combined labor.

To give a summary, the film follows a group of people as they investigate what could have possibly killed a Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife officer in the waters of Black Lake, Maine.  This is treated as a mystery far longer than it should've been, but they eventually realize it is a crocodile, at which point they work to find it, with the group divided on whether to capture or kill the beast.

(It feels relevant to point out that the fictional lake this takes place in is not named Lake Placid, which is one of those details I wish were better explained than a throwaway line.  The lake is fictional!  You can name it whatever you want!)

Despite the terrible script, I actually do enjoy this movie quite a bit.  It has the same type of charm to it that other creature features have won me over with.  Brendan Gleeson and Betty White are the standout performances, and the practical crocodile by Stan Winston Studios is a marvel - please don't judge the CGI effects too harshly, they were fairly adequate for the time period.

The mayhem is judiciously spread out, even if the movie could stand to have a bit more of it.  For a killer animal feature, the body count is criminally low.  The dialogue is terrible, but thankfully the plot does move along fairly well, outside of the mentioned issue with the investigation.  The worst thing that could happen with a movie like this is for it to feel long, especially with a time of 82 minutes, but it avoids that trap.

I can't really recommend this movie to anyone other than those that love cheesy creature features, or those that love to see old ladies swear like sailors.  My own enjoyment of it probably has a healthy amount of nostalgia attached, even if I can be fair with its score.

5 out of 10

Review: Carnival of Souls (1962)

"As you say, Doctor, I'm a person of strong will.  And the time to go out there is now.  And if I have to, I can go alone."

So states our main character in Carnival of Souls, Mary, while discussing herself and her desire to go to an old pavilion that seems to call to her.  Mary has been out of sorts since inexplicably surviving a car crash - one where she was underwater for three hours - trying to move on by relocating to another city.  However, she still feels disconnected, while also constantly haunted by a strange man who seems to be stalking her since her accident.

Carnival of Souls is very much a film about mood, with a pervasive eeriness that only fades for the briefest of moments.  From the very beginning, where we get credits that are slanted and off-center, there is a feeling that something is amiss: what we see shouldn't be happening, but not in a way that can easily be pointed out or articulated.  Coupled with a disorienting score, it's hard to imagine anyone watching this film and not being affected.

Our main character is played by Candace Hilligoss - who criminally did not have much of a career outside of this and one other movie - and I cannot express enough how perfect a match of performance and direction Hilligoss gives us.  Nothing about this movie would work if she made even a few missteps, but it is a damn near perfect performance.  Hilligoss not only manages the feat of feeling genuinely disconnected from the rest of the world she inhabits, but also plays the contradicting emotions of being coldly distant while desperately trying to reach out.  It's a complicated, sometimes unlikable performance that is about half of what has helped this movie last.

The other half comes from director Herk Harvey (who doubles as The Man in the film itself), who has no other directing credits outside of this one.  Able to tease tension out of the most mundane of shots, he also somehow makes everyday life at times seem hallucinatory.  This ability to spin uncanniness out of something as simple as a shopping excursion adds to the overall otherworldliness of the movie.  Harvey, along with editors Dan Palmquist and Sidney Berger, also has some interesting transitions between scenes.  It further puts off the audience, without alienating them.

I would definitely recommend this movie.  It does have a certain arthouse feel to it, and I could understand it leaving some people cold, but this is a gem of a film.

8.5 out of 10

Review: Piranha 3D (2010)

Given my distaste for High Tension, another movie directed by Alexander Aja, it might come as a surprise that this is another personal favorite of mine.  But I not only eagerly saw it in theaters back when it first came out (and loved it) but it has been regularly watched in the intervening years.  It's exploitative, trashy, lowest-common-denominator filmmaking and I love every minute of it.

The film takes place in Lake Victoria, Arizona (not a real city, but I appreciate the somewhat surprising decision to put it in Arizona of all places) and primarily follows Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue, giving just the perfect amount of character to this part) and her son Jake (Steven R. McQueen in one of the only two movies he has been in) as they deal with spring breakers partying alongside the emergence of prehistoric piranha released by an earthquake.

This movie is filled with other character actors - all of them having a blast - filling out roles both big and small.  Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Dina Meyer, Jerry O'Connell, Kelly Brook - all of them are playing to the cheap seats, which is exactly what this movie needs.

I've talked previously about movies where it is obvious that the gore are effects are done with a gleeful 'look what we can do!' attitude and Piranha 3D is at the forefront of my mind every time I mention it.  This gore is fantastic and plentiful, and if High Tension had to exist for this movie to be made, than it is absolved of at least a few of its sins.  In addition to the bites and tears from the piranhas, we have head smashes, decapitations, and  - in the movie's very best effects shot - a scalping via boat motor.  This movie is not for the squeamish.

It is also not for those uncomfortable with nudity: this movie displays mammaries like it wanted to see if it could set a record.  It's almost inspirational, the ways Aja finds to get women out of their clothes.  However, if you are a fan of the male body, prepare to only see guys in swim trunks, for this film is aping a particular type of exploitation flick, and it isn't one that is equal opportunity in that regard.

I mention the performances playing to the cheap seats, and the best in that regard is Jerry O'Connell.  Playing a character somewhat inspired by Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild infamy, he is relishing being as scuzzy as possible while also being hilarious.  It perfectly matches the tone the film is going for and is a highlight of every scene he is in.

Now, this movie is obviously not for everyone - the gore and nudity more than earn the R rating, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was on the cusp of an NC-17 - but for fans of the genre who appreciate effects work, this is a must see.  Fans of horror in general should enjoy it, even if it also has a healthy dose of comedy.

8 out of 10

Review: Alligator (1980)

One thing I have pushed for this year and last with my horror-movie-a-day tradition in October is to primarily watch movies I hadn't seen before and write reviews on them - a goal I have been fairly successful with.  But in doing so, I started missing out on several of my favorites and, more importantly, I didn't get the chance to recommend those beloved horror movies to the (beloved) people that read them.  So tonight's movie was an opportunity to address that.

For 1980's Alligator is amongst my favorite horror movies.  It's a real gem of a film, giving character actors like Robert Forster and Robin Riker the opportunity to play the lead while lampshading several famous critiques of this brand of creature feature.  It even goes out of its way to add extra plot points that one would think would've come up already in this particular genre.

This is a smart film.  People act like human beings (never a given in horror movies where we often get, at best, a singular trait for each of the characters), most of the decisions are fairly rational outside of the villains, and the story progresses in a fairly believable way.  Having this level of competence after watching movies like Tentacles or The Food of the Gods - even if I did enjoy the latter of those - is a balm of the soul.

Do we really need a plot summary?  If so: Building on the urban legend of giant alligators in the sewers after being flushed down the drain, Alligator follows Detective David Madison (Forster) as he deals with two investigations.  The first involves people's pets disappearing and, if they are found, the pets having grown much larger than they should have in a normal time.  The second involves people disappearing in the sewer systems under Chicago, with their remains eventually coming out from the same sewer exit as the oversized animals.  Seems our alligator has been feeding on test experiments dumped into the sewer and has somewhat mutated itself.

Now, to go into the genius of the script: it allows the audience to figure out the connection well before our characters do.  Madison starts to piece it together after meeting with herpetologist Dr. Marisa Kendall (Riker), and the movie doesn't waste time revealing who is responsible for both the pet kidnappings and the giant alligator (tying those two plot threads together nicely).  At that point it is off to the races as they try to stop the alligator from its killing spree.

Riker and Forster play off each very well throughout the movie, and while the early scenes aren't bad, the movie takes off once the two start working together.  There's also some dry humor throughout - including a particularly well done running gag.

The effects for this movie are also fairly strong.  While some of it has aged poorly - what wouldn't after 45 years? - the practical work rings truer than the CGI of many later films. The centerpiece 'animal runs amok' scene still works all these years later because of the effort put into the practical effects.

If I were to critique it, I would say the direction - outside of one particular scene that scared me something good as a child - is pretty pedestrian.  Nothing mindbogglingly bad, but nothing of note outside that one scene.  There's also a character (Thomas Kemp, played by Bart Braverman) that seems to be missing a scene or two.  He very much comes across as having an agenda against Madison, but it feels underexplored.

All that said, I recommend this movie to everyone.  It has just the right level of everything - humor, gore, story, scariness - without going overboard.

8 out of 10