'Lee Cronin's The Mummy' Review
- John Odette
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
Release Date: 04/17/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Horror.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures.
The Verdict: A Maybe
When the credits rolled, I walked out of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy with a feeling of confusion. I couldn’t tell if I was bored or frustrated with my experience because this film delivers a mummy, of sorts, that felt out of place. It’s a good-looking film, filled with striking visuals, and expected moments of gore and violence. I admired it, I’m not sure I liked it.
The Mummy, as an archetype of horror fiction and Egyptian lore, is well-trodden ground. Within the last 94 years of cinema, different iterations of The Mummy have terrified audiences and have drawn the ire of many sociological critics in the process.
Boris Karloff’s 1932 appearance as the somber Imhotep helped launch the Classic Universal Monster catalog, with Lon Chaney Jr. picking up the mantle soon after.
The 1960s Hammer films, starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, revived the Mummy genre, replacing atmosphere and Gothic presence with faster pacing and heavier violence.
Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser, brought the creature into the 21st Century with a handful of swashbuckling adventures, riffing on Indiana Jones and comedic beats while swapping out horror elements for a lighter tone. Additionally, leading into a tepid Scorpion King spinoff series that heavily deviated from the mainline.
The Dark Universe series began in 2017 and died just as quickly, with a new Mummy adaptation that even superstar Tom Cruise could not keep resurrected.
At long last, and appropriately fitting the 30-year-or-so cycle between these various iterations, we have arrived at Lee Cronin’s vision. This updated rendering fits the profile for every preceding Mummy film, not copying beat for beat what has come before, but rather grabbing scraps from the floor and wrapping them into a new identity.
I rather enjoyed his last film, Evil Dead Rise, because it embraced the mythology it was built on while also feeling fresh, not a bogus retread. Cronin attempts the same approach here, but it stalls itself out too soon and too often. His directorial approach shows a preference for style, and style alone. The extreme overuse of diopter shots, a technique prominently featured in 70s cinema to enhance a feeling of surreal suspense, does the heavy lifting for the tension. But when Cronin pulls this rabbit out of the hat enough times, the technique loses its power. Instead of ramping up tension, he inspires yawns.
8 years after their daughter Katie disappeared in Cairo, Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa) receive a call of a lifetime. Katie has been found. She has been locked in a sarcophagus, her body rife with underdeveloped features, long nails, and distorted limbs. She doesn’t speak. Her grandmother, Carmen (Veronica Falcón), diligently prays with her rosary over Katie’s body after Katie’s return to the family’s stateside Albuquerque home.
Gradually, the curse that has infected Katie spreads, affecting her teen brother Sebastián (Shylo Molina) and their little sister Maud (Billie Roy), now the same age Katie was when she disappeared.
If this plot point reminds you of Evil Dead Rise, you are not alone. There is an additional B-story that mostly takes place back in Egypt, with the Missing Persons Detective Zaki (May Calamawy) investigating Katie’s disappearance while corresponding with Charlie, whose obsession with finding answers consumes him. His wife, Larissa, desperately tries to reconnect with the catatonic Katie and holds Charlie in contempt for not putting his energy in the same direction. She doesn’t care about answers; she’s just grateful her daughter is home.
The hybrid of possession and procedural is the engine that drives The Mummy, Lee Cronin himself citing the films Poltergeist and Seven as inspiration. I can appreciate this sentiment, as Cronin is using this film as part storytelling and part grieving tool after the loss of his mother during the production of his last film.
But there is much here that just does not work. At two hours and fourteen minutes, this film slogs along. Much of the runtime gets bogged down in the investigation story, taking us away from the time we spend with Katie. Charlie recruits an archaeology professor to study bandages that fall off Katie, which are inscribed with ancient ritual text. Detective Zaki uncovers a centuries-old plot of sacrifice and death. And all of this seems important, but comes at the cost of your attention and patience.
More runtime padding comes from the often-dumbed-down dialogue that overexplains plot points and relationship dynamics, particularly between Charlie and Larissa. If pandering to the lowest common denominator were an award category, Lee Cronin vehemently punched his ticket for a nomination. This film is paced so anyone could keep up, but the bloated runtime does not produce a satisfying exploration of grief, loss, and reconciliation; it was an endurance run.
The performances here are sufficient and effective. Both actresses who play Katie, Emily Mitchell as young Katie, and Natalie Grace, are fantastic. Jack Reynor, who many horror fans will remember as the ill-fated boyfriend, Christian, in Midsommar, channels devoted-dad energy. Laia Costa deftly handles the material as a grieving mother.
This film looks good, with cinematographer Dave Garbett photographing Ireland and Spain, which beautifully double for the US and the Middle East. The gore make-up and visual effects are on par with Cronin’s previous work and are a highlight amongst the other film ingredients. Even if we get to see so little of the effects department’s hard work.
And that is the frustrating part of this movie that stuck with me when the lights came on, and I left the theater: I didn’t feel like I got my money’s worth of scares. I was dragged along by the vacillation between the chilling horror and the detective story. My confusion compounded because I wanted to feel tension and empathy, but I couldn’t stick with the characters enough to appreciate their journey. My threshold for understanding outpaced the film’s ability to connect.
