Allegedly Lee Cronin turned down the opportunity to direct a sequel to Evil Dead Rise in order to tackle a new take on the Universal Monster classic. But Lee Cronin’s The Mummy asks: what if he actually *did* make that Evil Dead sequel, just under a different name?
It’s not exactly a critique to say that The Mummy feels like Cronin is moving through familiar waters because his new film hews so closely to his entry in the Necronomicon franchise, but…it also doesn’t feel particularly innovative either.
The film opens with an Egyptian husband and wife discovering that the sarcophagus hidden under a mini pyramid in their basement isn’t entirely dormant. It’s fairly standard, but there are enough creepy bits, fake-outs, and even comedy that it bodes well for what’s to come.
Following this sequence, a good portion of the first act serves to introduce the Cannon family living in Cairo, Egypt, including journalist father Charley (Jack Reynor), nurse matriarch Larissa (Laia Costa), 8 year old daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell), and Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams), the youngest child.
These early scenes do a good job of sketching out the family dynamics, including a potential new job that would move them to New York and Lari’s pregnant status. Then tragedy strikes: Katie is preyed upon by ‘The Magician’ (Hayat Kamille), a woman who poisons her (Disney style) with poisoned nectarine before absconding with the girl under the cover of a sandstorm.
Following a dispiriting meeting with the police, including May Calamawy‘s Detective Zaki, The Mummy jumps ahead eight years to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The remaining family members live with Lari’s mother (played by the wonderful Verónica Falcón) where Seb (Shylo Molina) and youngest Maud (Billie Roy) are kept under close watch. The action kicks in when a downed plane unearths a sarcophagus containing Katie’s mummified, but still alive body (Natalie Grace). What happened to Katie and what she has become drives the rest of the film.
Naturally – because this is a horror film – it’s nothing good. Cronin’s screenplay does a solid job of laying out the reasons why the family would overlook all of the red flags about Katie’s conditions to make the new normal work, but no one talks to each other about their experiences or what they discover, which is a maddening plot contrivance.
Alas, aside from the fantastically gnarly body horror, enough split diopter shots to make Brian DePalma jealous, and an exquisitely squelchy sound design, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy succumbs to several major pitfalls.
The further the film progresses, the harder it becomes to shake the pervasive feeling that this is simply Cronin doing his Evil Dead routine again (but worse, because we’ve already seen it). It’s as if the writer/director can’t help himself from including more and more of the same scares, sequences and even character beats. There’s a demon-laden lore, several recovered tapes with ominous warnings and chilling content, a Deadite-like resurrection sequence, and a plot that pits infected/corrupted family members against each other (which is exactly what Rise did).
The result is a film that feels excessively familiar and repetitive (at worst), and is surprisingly slight and shallow (at best).
Attempts to build up the demonic lore feels particularly undercooked and the plot mechanics are such that the audience is often two steps ahead of the characters. This is most galling in the film’s climax, which relies on a revelatory VHS cassette delivered in-person (!) from Egypt (!!) that elaborates on information that was already clearly telegraphed and pretty obvious well beforehand.
Performances are solid, though no one aside from Grace has much to do. There are some solidly creepy sequences, though the best of them feel pulled directly from Evil Dead Rise, especially a memorable funeral gone horribly awry.
Most upsetting is how editor Bryan Shaw seemingly went on a lunch break and never returned: in addition to clocking in at a completely unnecessary 131 minutes, the coda – which obliterates any stakes the film had – is horribly paced and could easily have been cut down. Instead Lee Cronin’s The Mummy ends with a drawn-out whimper. 2/5
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is in theatres April 17, 2026
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