Nora and Jim are drunkenly in love, “but she had never told him the truth.” They take their son to Ireland, where her brother Christopher Walken is looking after grandma Lois Smith, and is incidentally tending to an ancient druid mummy which eventually comes alive and kills him. The couple’s son is allowed to play with the ancient dagger he found under their bed, while local girl Alice hangs around and narrates, and mom merges with the bog witch, and things get out of hand.

Family portrait through Guinness:

The lead couple was good at least – Mom is Alison Elliott of The Underneath (and Elle Fanning’s mom in 20th Century Women), dad is Jared Harris, who is son of King Richard Harris, and is not Sean Harris from Mission: Impossible. Based on Bram Stoker’s mummy horror The Jewel of Seven Stars, previously adapted by Hammer and by Fred Olen Ray and by Mike Newell. All these adaptations have been poorly rated, so maybe we should stop trying. This one doesn’t work, the whole vibe is off.

Almereyda in Filmmaker:

Well, it was supposed to be fast and cheap, but it became expensive and slow … It’s entirely in color, and it’s almost entirely in focus, not counting some flashbacks shot in Super-8 … I had some hopeful feelings about [horror] but I think it’s a wrong swerve for me … Genre is a way of traveling through familiar terrain, but I always hope to get someplace new. I may have only one life, but I’m hoping to make many movies, and many kinds of movies. If they’re true to themselves, there’s a way that they don’t have to exclude each other.