Lee Cronin's The Mummy Review: A Surprisingly Stylish And Gory Freakshow (But Not Really A Mummy Movie)

Is "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" really a mummy movie? It has almost nothing in common with the Boris Karloff classic, nor the Brendan Fraser adventure franchise (which is currently being resurrected). And it certainly has nothing to do with Tom Cruise's aborted Dark Universe launch. I suppose you could argue that there aren't really "rules" for making a mummy movie; you simply have to have an undead mummy show up somewhere in the film and you're good to go. 

So, sure, I guess you could classify "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" as a mummy movie. But when you unwrap the film it becomes clear that this is a case of brand-name awareness. People recognize the "Mummy" title, and that's more likely to put butts in seats.

Ironically, the Blumhouse-produced "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" ends up feeling more like an "Exorcist" movie than the actual "Exorcist" movie Blumhouse released not too long ago. Cronin also seems to be porting over a lot of the gnarly tricks he used in his super-fun gore-fest "Evil Dead Rise." And just for good measure, the story follows a similar path as another of Cronin's films, the folk-horror flick "The Hole in the Ground." That 2019 title told of a young child who goes missing, only to return changed in some horrifying, supernatural way. And so does "The Mummy" (look, I'm not going to keep typing "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" over and over again, even though that's the official title).

As the film begins, the Cannon family is living in Cairo. Charlie (Jack Reynor) is a foreign correspondent journalist with dreams of a cushy New York morning news gig. His wife Larissa (Laia Costa) is a nurse and pregnant with their third child. Their other kids are Seb (played at first by Dean Allen Williams, then by Shylo Molina after a time jump) and Katie (Emily Mitchell). The Cannons seem to have a happy life, but that's shattered quickly when Katie is abducted by a mysterious woman (Hayat Kamille) who claims to be a magician. In a nice fairy tale touch, the Magician ominously offers Katie a piece of fruit before the kidnapping, like the Wicked Queen handing Snow White a poisoned apple.

Eight years later, Katie is still missing and the Cannons have tried to move on. Larissa has given birth to the precocious Maud (Billie Roy) and the family lives in a big, sprawling (and secluded) house in New Mexico owned by Larissa's mother Carmen (Verónica Falcón). The Cannons need not get too comfortable though, because once again, their lives are about to be turned upside down. Because Katie has been found – alive! But wait, there's a chilling twist: the young girl, now played by Natalie Grace, was found wrapped up in bandages (like a mummy!) in a 3000-year-old sarcophagus.

That's bound to mess anyone up, and sure enough, Katie returns home looking worse for wear. Her skin is pale and sagging and she's prone to violent outbursts when she's not stuck in a rigid catatonic state. Things quickly go from bad to worse and an abundance of bloody, traumatizing body horror ensues. This family is in serious trouble. All the while, a detective back in Egypt, played by the captivating May Calamawy, tries to find out what the hell happened to Katie.

Like I said: this doesn't really sound like a mummy movie. If it weren't for the whole "Katie was wrapped up inside a sarcophagus" angle, there would be almost nothing mummy-ish going on here. So is that a problem? Blumhouse has so far released three different films that riff on classic monsters with a twist. Leigh Whannell's excellent 2020 "The Invisible Man" reimagined H. G. Wells' narrative as a story of abuse and gaslighting. The results were promising, thanks to Whannell's skilled direction and a committed performance from Elisabeth Moss. It also followed through with its title promise: there was indeed an invisible man in the film!

Whannell's not-so-excellent "Wolf Man" from last year was a misfire, though, because it strayed too far from the basic concept. Instead of a supernatural werewolf, the lead character, played by Christopher Abbott, was infected with some sort of virus called "hill fever." He looked nothing like a "wolf man," and that was a serious problem. It certainly didn't help that the film was oddly lifeless.

Now we have the Blumhouse take on "The Mummy," which is potentially courting a "Wolf Man"-style disappointment by not really being a mummy movie just as that wasn't really a wolf man movie. Thankfully, Cronin goes absolutely bonkers overloading his film with style and nasty gore effects. Cronin and cinematographer Dave Garbett throw enough split diopter shots into this thing to give Brian De Palma an orgasm. There are also a series of intentionally jarring close-ups of gnashing, bloody teeth and petrified faces. It all looks wonderfully sinister, aided by an overall feeling of dread and doom that hovers over the majority of the film. Cronin also stages a few highly charged set pieces, like a stunning plane crash glimpsed from a distance.

Once you look beyond all that style, though, you begin to see the flaws in Cronin's design. His "Mummy" frequently feels like it's missing something, which is odd since the film clocks in at an unnecessarily long 133 minutes. You get the sense that the writer-director was hoping for something a little more personal and emotional, something family-driven, like "Hereditary," and the producers kept asking, "Can you trim all that stuff down and throw in more popped eyeballs?" 

The Cannon family is too thinly sketched for the film's attempts at wringing drama from their plight. Reynor is good at bugging his eyes out and looking appropriately horrified at everything going on, but after the opening sequence touching on Charlie's career goals, we learn almost nothing about him. The same goes for Larissa, who keeps making increasingly bad choices and ignoring the fact that something is seriously wrong with Katie.

Natalie Grace is quite good at playing up Katie's monstrous state, but it's so clear from the get-go that Katie is inflicted with some sort of supernatural force that it becomes difficult to reckon with how all the other characters behave after Katie does one disturbing thing after another. Some clumsy dialogue tries to push this aside by having the Cannons too happy at the prospect of having Katie home to care, but it's not entirely convincing. And as Katie begins to levitate and hurl naughty words, you can't help but think Cronin should've pitched this as an "Exorcist" movie instead.

And yet, "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" is unflinchingly nasty in a way that horror hounds are bound to enjoy. Everyone gets put through the wringer here, with each and every character suffering grievous bodily harm, all while Katie's skin starts to peel off like bloody wallpaper. Cronin and his team work overtime to make this movie gross, filled with goo and guts and uncomfortable squelching noises. A lifetime of horror movies has made me mostly immune to such things, but the third act of this film goes to such gruesome places that a woman at my screening who had inexplicably brought her very young child to this R-rated movie quickly scooped her kid up and hurried out of the theater.

As uneven as "The Mummy" might be, I was mostly on board with its unapologetically vicious thrills and chills ... until the last ten or so minutes. I won't dare spoil what happens, but Cronin and company tack on a finale that seems almost certainly the result of test screening reshoot requests. Worse than that, it also feels like the producers pushed the director to set up some sort of franchise potential, which is wholly unnecessary.

But Cronin deserves credit for trying to do something different with the "Mummy" scenario, and he's certainly more successful than that Tom Cruise movie. At the same time, I can't help but miss the old school charms of the Boris Karloff or Hammer Horror days. Ultimately, "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" delivers plenty of blood and guts. But is that enough?

/Film Rating: 6 out of 10

"Lee Cronin's The Mummy" opens in theaters April 17, 2026.