LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY (2026) – Ancient Evil, Modern Nonsense, and Two Hours Wasted

First, let’s clear away any false hope: this version of The Mummy has nothing to do with the Brendan Fraser films, so anyone expecting rollicking adventure, charm, or even basic fun should probably recalibrate immediately. This is Lee Cronin’s take on the material, from the director of The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise, and it aims squarely for dread rather than spectacle. The story drops us into Cairo, where an American family, the Cannons, are shattered by the mysterious abduction of their young daughter. Eight years later, she is discovered inside a coffin, mummified and somehow still alive—because apparently that is the sort of news one is expected to process calmly. From there, the film follows the family as they bring her home, only to discover that what has returned to them is less a miracle than a full-scale supernatural disaster.

To Cronin’s credit, the film occasionally shows flashes of visual intelligence. A few camera angles and point-of-view shots create genuine unease and suggest the presence of a more disciplined horror film lurking somewhere beneath the bandages. Unfortunately, those moments are too rare to rescue a screenplay that feels alarmingly thin. The narrative lurches from one grotesque set piece to the next with very little connective tissue, as though shock alone is meant to stand in for suspense, character development, and logic. The family members are written so flatly that they seem less like people than delivery systems for panic and exposition. Worse, many of the film’s supposedly harrowing moments carry almost no emotional or narrative consequence; characters witness something appalling, then carry on as if the script itself has forgotten what just happened. Rather than building terror, the film begins to resemble a haunted-house attraction that confuses noise and morbidity for atmosphere. And when the jump scares arrive, several feel so familiar that the movie stops paying homage to better horror films and starts looking suspiciously like it borrowed their homework in a hurry.

By the time the film limps into its final act, it has already spent most of its goodwill, and the closing explanation for how the evil is meant to be contained only makes things worse. What should feel like revelation instead plays like desperate improvisation—an untidy pile of supernatural rules, half-formed ideas, and borrowed genre logic thrown together in the hope that no one will ask too many questions. The ending, much like the film itself, feels assembled from pieces of stronger horror movies without ever discovering an identity of its own. In the end, The Mummy is not so much terrifying as exhausting: a film with a promising premise, a few competent visual touches, and very little else to justify its runtime. My advice is simple—unless you have a particular fondness for watching clichés rise from the dead, you would be better off spending those two hours on almost anything else.