Lee Cronin doesn’t just dig up The Mummy—he contaminates it. Forget the pulp swagger, the treasure hunts, the old tomb-raiding mystique. His take on this lore is something far uglier and meaner. Which, to some audiences, is exactly what is needed to dust off a resurrection act like The Mummy.
Cronin rips the monster out of its classic mythology and drops it into a family nightmare that feels part possession film, part fever dream, complete with panic attacks and ancient curses clawing at the walls. The film follows journalist Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) and his wife Larissa (Laia Costa), whose daughter Katie (Natalie Grace) disappears in the desert, only to return eight years later under deeply unsettling circumstances. What begins as a miracle quickly turns into a nightmare as the family realizes Katie has come back carrying an ancient and malevolent force tied to a buried curse.
As Charlie and Larissa fight to save their daughter, they’re pulled into escalating supernatural terror alongside Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy) and Carmen Santiago (Verónica Falcón), while Katie’s siblings, Sebastián and Maud, are caught in the growing darkness.
When the film bites, it bites deep. There’s a savage energy running through it, especially when Cronin leans into grotesque excess. Flesh splits, bones contort, curses seep into generational trauma like poison through old wounds. The practical effects have a tactile nastiness that makes the horror feel physical, almost sticky, and some sequences don’t just play out—they pounce.
Still, the movie fights itself. For every delirious plunge into hieroglyphic madness, there’s a stretch where it starts dragging its bandaged feet. You feel the runtime. At over two hours, the curse can start circling the same haunted ground.
At times the film feels less like The Mummy and more like The Exorcist dug up and wrapped in funeral linen, which works until it doesn’t. Yet there’s something almost reckless in Cronin’s approach that keeps pulling you back in. He’s not treating the myth like a sacred artifact under glass—he’s smashing it open and when he lets the movie go feral, when it embraces that unhinged Evil Dead-style mania, it rips with real force. When it reaches too hard for myth-heavy seriousness, it can sink into quicksand.
That push and pull is the film in a nutshell. It lurches, then lunges. Not a masterpiece, not even close, but as a foul, corpse-breath reinvention of a sacred horror icon, it’s got venom in its fangs.
MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 130 mins
Director: Lee Cronin
Writer: Lee Cronin
Cast: Jack Reynor; Laia Costa; May Calamawy
Genre: Folk Horror | Horror
Tagline: What Happened to Katie?
Memorable Movie Quote: "Don't worry Grandma, it's fun to be dead."
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Official Site: https://www.blumhouse.com/film/lee-cronin-s-the-mummy
Release Date: April 17, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: The young daughter of a journalist disappears into the desert without a trace. Eight years later, the broken family is shocked when she is returned to them, as what should be a joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare.
