“We have deadites at home”, the deadites at home are Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.
A family is tested after their daughter disappears while visiting Cairo. When she is found years later, hidden inside a sarcophagus, she’s exhibiting strange behaviour, and unknown wounds.
Hollywood really wants to succeed remaking The Mummy, doesn’t it? Written and directed by Lee Cronin so much he put his name on it, this version stars Jack Reynor (Midsommar), Laia Costa, May Calamawy (Marvel’s Moon Knight), and Natalie Grace. Unfortunately, outside a promising start, the film is thuddingly dull. It speaks to another film Lee Cronin directed recently. More on that later.
When Charlie’s job has his family living in Cairo, his daughter Katie is abducted. Nearly a decade later, while living in Mexico, the family hear she has been found. However, she was found in an ancient sarcophagus. Tremendously malnourished, unable to speak, with strange bandages over her, and terrible fits of rage. One might say… she’s become a mummy. But the doctors say the best solution is for the family to take her back home, so she can slowly recover from this “locked-in state” in a familiar environment.
Yeah, so that doesn’t work out so well.
Let’s just go ahead and start. Lee Cronin’s other notable director credit is Evil Dead Rise. Which, to its credit, was pretty good. Not everyone is going to like an Evil Dead without Bruce Campbell, but it was inventive and really quite harrowing. I was watching this 2026 movie with a growing sense of déjà vu. Yes, indeed, this is less The Mummy and more The Evil Dead with bandages.
It is frustrating that Cronin has just painted the mummy as yet another demon. Yes, sweet little Katie (Grace) has been possessed by an ancient evil, thus becoming the titular “mummy”. But it mostly begins and ends with unseen bandages and ridiculous plots involving coffins. Everything else is straight from Evil Dead Rise.
Granted, it is horrific. The curse of the demon tears the family apart while they try their best to comfort their daughter. The wound detail and gore are incredible. Natalie Grace is very intimidating (most of the time) as the creature. But its just another demon possession movie. More little girls running on all fours, speaking in deep voices. People making stupid decisions. There just more sand. Oh, and of course, there’s a spooky VHS tape, as we didn’t have enough tropes already.
To think that the original The Mummy, from 1932, was a more intellectual monster. Once again, we find ourselves wishing (at the very least) for the halcyon days of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.
Is it all bad? No. But expectations were quite high, so the comedown is heavy. The start of the story is strong; representing a strong family unit who will ride through the oncoming horrors. They have humour, chemistry, and history, as well as the promise of a future. Seeing them dismantled is intense and quite gruelling for the unsuspecting viewer. It has decent levity sometimes, but overall it is grim.
Midway through the story, May Calamawy is introduced as an Egyptian police investigator named Zaki. This character steals the movie. Honestly, the shoehorned-in American family could have been sidelined for a police procedural with Zaki trying to unwrap (get it?) a string of murders in Egypt. That would have been awesome. So she does breathe some life into the movie.
Honestly, by the ending, I couldn’t wait for it to end. With the tropes, the bafflingly stupid characters. Stupidly oblivious people unable to see horrible things happening around them. And it being too similar to Evil Dead Rise in too many scenes. Just watch that. At least it knows what it is.
