Studio: Wild Eye Releasing
Director: Charles Pinion
Writer: Greg Salman, Charles Pinion
Producer: Greg Salman
Stars: Suziey Block, Aidan Bristow, Aaron Burt, Esther Canata, Erin Condry, Jack Grimmett, Rudy Marquez, Peter Marr, Jennifer June Ross, Greg Salman
Review Score:
Summary:
A university research team becomes cursed when they unearth an ancient Aztec mummy at a New Mexico dig site.
Review:
“American Mummy” – A review written as an imaginary, albeit entirely probable, conversation between two men responsible for releasing the movie:
“Sh*t! It’s 2017. Universal is rebooting their monster movies with Tom Cruise in ‘The Mummy’ on June 9th. Yet here it is almost May and we have our pants around our ankles, without a mockbuster to dump onto home video and piggyback off the hype.”
“You know Bob, I may have a solution. Remember the movie ‘Aztec Blood’?”
“Does anyone?”
“It premiered at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival in 2014.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Then it played something called the Macabro Festival in Mexico a month later.”
“I don’t know what that is either.”
“Anyway, what I’m getting at is, this completely forgotten ‘Aztec Blood’ flick has been gathering dust for three years. I’m thinking we simply retitle it ‘American Mummy’ and-“
“Hold on. You’re telling me we already have a mummy movie sitting on the shelf just waiting to be released?”
“Well, not exactly a mummy in the traditional sense. For one thing, it’s Aztec, not Egyptian.”
“Whatever. As long as it’s wrapped in bandages.”
“It’s not. It’s just a dirty corpse that a university research team finds buried in a New Mexico cave.”
“But it gets up, walks around, kills people, and whatnot?”
“Er, no. One of the researchers performs a blood ritual over the dead body and unleashes a curse. One by one, the group gets infected and attacks one another. The skeleton, I mean mummy, doesn’t actually do anything.”
“Is there a pyramid, or a tomb, or a sarcophagus? Anything people usually associate with mummies?”
“There’s a goofy-looking ceremonial mask on the corpse. That’s something.”
“Sand? For crying out loud, is there sand?”
“Sort of. It takes place in a desert. There’s a lot of dried dirt that looks like sand.”
“Close enough, I guess. But Aztec is Mexican. What does ‘American’ have to do with it?”
“Oh, don’t get hung up on that. You see Bob, after the low-budget DTV horror industry ran out of nouns to put the word ‘Paranormal’ in front of, we started using ‘American.’ ‘An American Haunting.’ ‘An American Ghost Story.’ ‘American Poltergeist.’ ‘American Exorcism.’ It’s all the rage, at least until we burn through all those same nouns again. ‘Mummy’ hasn’t been used yet though, so this is perfect.”
“So what you’re saying is we have a movie we can call ‘American Mummy’ even though the main monster is neither American nor a mummy?”
“Mexico is in North America. Technically, ‘American’ isn’t inaccurate.”
“Alright, fine fine. Is the movie scary?”
“Um, I wouldn’t say that. There are some goopy blood and torn body effects that are sort of gonzo though. Gorehounds might dig that, I don’t know.”
“Who’s in it?”
“No one you’ve heard of.”
“What about the director? What else has he done?”
“This is his first directing credit since 1996.”
“(Sigh) At least tell me the movie looks halfway decent.”
“It looks like a typical microbudget indie horror film, what else? Interiors are shot inside tiny tents or against a papier-mâché rock wall that’s supposed to resemble a cave. Exteriors are shot in a desert so windy, dialogue sometimes gets garbled. That’s when the audio isn’t fighting with a soundtrack that ridiculously overemphasizes onscreen events with generic music.”
“Jeebus. Your description makes me want to jump off a bridge.”
“Imagine how the people we’re duping into renting this will feel.”
“F*ck it then. You’ve got the green light. Just make the box art look like all of those other mummy movies. You know, with a kind of cool looking creature that doesn’t actually appear in the film. Make its face turn into sand on one side too. I don’t know why, but every other modern mummy movie does it, so that must be the way to go.”
“One last thing, Bob. Did you want to see the film for yourself before we go to print and drop it to VOD?”
“Dear God no. It sounds awful.”
“It is, Bob. It is.”
Review Score: 20
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.