Alexis (Leila Anastasia Scott) is a San Antonio news reporter who, while sitting in a small cafe, is approached by a man named Joe (Jason Scarbrough).
At first, Joe just seems like an appreciative fan of Alexis’s reporting, albeit a bit of creepy and pushy one. But it’s only after Joe sits down, removes his glasses, and starts to speak about his life to Alexis that the truth becomes apparent. Joe says that he’s the serial killer who has been terrorizing San Antonio for the past few months. His trademark is that he mummifies the bodies of his victims. At first skeptical and then increasingly disturbed, Alexis listens as Joe calmly discusses his life, from his childhood as the son of a mortician to his time in the Army, to his current life as a killer. As the conversation continues, it becomes apparent that Joe has a connection to Alexis and her family.
First released on January 2nd (and therefore, the first film of 2024), The Mummy Murders is a low-budget serial killer film that was filmed on location in San Antonio. I have to admit that I’m a bit weary of serial killer films, just because there have been so many of them that they can sometimes feel rather interchangeable. There’s only so many times you can sit through someone giving a long-winded explanation of their motives and their techniques before you start to wonder what the point of it all truly is. Personally, I am of the opinion that Lars Von Trier pushed the serial killer genre to its logical conclusion with The House That Jack Built. Matt Dillon plunging into the abyss was not only a fitting end for his character but also a sign that we had learned just about everything that there was to learn about what makes a serial killer tick. There’s nothing left to discover.
That said, when taken on its own terms, The Mummy Murders is effectively creepy. Again, it’s an extremely low budget movie and, towards the end of the film, the boom mic makes a presumably uninvited appearance. There’s some holes in the film’s plot and I took issue with a lot of the choices that Alexis made throughout the film. But Jason Scarbrough gives an effectively unhinged performance as Joe and the film deserves a lot of credit for not trying to make him into some sort of erudite, witty Hannibal Lecter-style murderer. Instead, Joe is a believable creep who takes pride in his crimes because they’re the only thing for which he’s ever shown any ability. Joe looks at both Alexis and the audience with a thousand-yard state, leaving little doubt that there’s zero room for kindness or empathy in Joe’s death-obsessed mind. In an especially creepy moment, Joe talks about his excitement when, as a pre-teen, he discovered that the body of a girl on whom he had a crush had been brought to his father’s mortuary. It’s icky and it’s creepy but it’s probably a more realistic portrayal of the killer’s sick mindset than what is found in most films.
As a final note, The Mummy Murders was shot on location in San Antonio. San Antonio’s a lovely city. More films should shoot down there.
Through the Shattered Lens 