Lee Cronin’s The Mummy – REVIEW

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A return to its horror roots with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy….

If you’re expecting the new 2026 ‘Mummy’ movie to be similar to the fun, action-packed film starring Brendan Fraser, you’ll be surprised. This version, directed and written by horror specialist Lee Cronin, is a truly terrifying horror movie, focusing on scares above all else.

The story centers on Charlie Cannon (played by Jack Reynor, who bears a strong resemblance to Chris Pratt), a journalist living in Cairo with his wife, Larissa, who is pregnant, and their two young children, Katie and Sebastian. Their lives are disrupted when Katie is kidnapped and seemingly vanishes without a trace. The investigation by the Cairo Missing Persons Unit proves fruitless, mirroring the frustrating lack of progress in the Madeleine McCann case. Eight years later, Larissa gives birth to another daughter, Maud, and her religious mother-in-law moves in. Then, they receive the shocking news that Katie has been found. However, the Katie they find isn’t the happy, cheerful girl they remember; she’s deeply traumatized by her experiences during the abduction.

Katie has become distant and quiet, often glaring at people and occasionally swearing – behavior many parents might recognize in a typical teenager. However, her current state is a shocking change from the bright-eyed child she once was. She now looks damaged, almost as if something has been deliberately ruined, like a favorite toy broken by a sibling. Things are clearly not right, and Katie’s return home begins to cast a dark shadow over the family, as the author slowly builds the sense of dread and horror.

I was really struck by how this take on the legend felt more like a compelling mystery than straight-up horror. It’s clear the director brought over a lot of the intense visual style from ‘Evil Dead Rise,’ and honestly, the amount of gore just kept building and building. By the end, it all culminated in a truly over-the-top, bloody finale!

It’s been ages since a truly scary Mummy movie appeared, one that felt connected to the classic Universal Monsters. Universal attempted a modern revival with their ‘MonsterVerse,’ but it quickly failed after the 2017 Tom Cruise film, which was more action than horror. Now, Warner Bros. is trying again with ‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,’ and this time it’s genuinely frightening. While it has slight echoes of ‘The Exorcist,’ it’s mostly inspired by the over-the-top gore of ‘Evil Dead,’ featuring a particularly gruesome toe-clipping scene reminiscent of the ‘cheese grater moment’ from ‘Evil Dead Rise’.

I really appreciated Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. While the story could have been a little more streamlined, it was fantastic to see a horror movie that didn’t pull its punches. Getting an 18 rating meant they could really deliver on the horror, and honestly, it made the film so much better than if they’d toned it down for a wider audience.

Here’s the trailer…..

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2026-04-16 16:24