‘The Mummy’ review: Lee Cronin follows ‘Evil Dead Rise’ with listless take on the classic monster movie

Dir/scr: Lee Cronin. US. 2026. 134mins

The Mummy is a possessed-child horror film with some decent scares but also an abundance of absurd plot points and dimwitted characters. As he demonstrated with his previous picture, 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, writer/director Lee Cronin knows how to construct suspense sequences and ramp up tension, and there are moments in his portrait of a couple dealing with the traumatic return of their missing child that are legitimately frightening. But the film’s ambitious scope is betrayed by derivative genre ideas that make this tale of the dead disappointingly listless. 

The film’s ambitious scope is betrayed by derivative genre ideas

Warner Bros. opens The Mummy across a few international territories on April 15 before unveiling the film in the UK and US on April 17. Evil Dead Rise, Cronin’s second feature following 2019 debut The Hole In The Ground, brought in an impressive $147 million worldwide against a tiny budget, and the studio hopes he will once again deliver solid grosses. With the announcement that Brendad Fraser and Rachel Weisz will be returning to their popular Mummy franchise for a sequel releasing through Universal in 2028, it remains to be seen whether there is audience appetite for a new take on this creature feature; Tom Cruise’s  high-profile riff on the famed monster, 2017’s The Mummy, collected only $409 million after all.

As the film begins, loving married couple Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa) are working in Cairo with their two children when tragedy strikes. Their daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell) is abducted from their home by a mysterious local (Hayat Kamille), who escapes without a trace. Eight years later, Charlie and Larissa have moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, doing their best to continue on since Katie’s disappearance while raising their teen son Sebastian (Shylo Molina) and young daughter Maud (Billie Roy). Then, they receive a shock: Katie (now played by Natalie Grace) has been found, although she is catatonic, badly bruised and malnourished. The family is so happy to have her back that they try to overlook her profound ailments, but soon it becomes clear that something supernatural has happened to the young woman.

Anyone expecting this Mummy to resemble the old-fashioned action-adventure fun of the Fraser films will be spooked by Cronin’s nerve-shredding, gory treatment. More The Exorcist than a newfangled Universal monster movie, The Mummy relies heavily on Oscar-nominated makeup artist Arjen Tuiten, who transforms Grace into a disturbing demon child with a pockmarked face, disarmingly long toe nails and a ghostly pallour. The makeup is so horrifying, in fact, that it becomes the first of many problems with Cronin’s screenplay. Clearly, Katie is in need of serious medical attention — and also maybe a priest — but Larissa stubbornly insists she can take care of her daughter. Not surprisingly, this misplaced confidence creates more issues as Katie behaves in increasingly creepy ways, preying on her bizarrely unsuspecting family.

Questionable logic bedevils The Mummy throughout. Conveniently, Charlie and Larissa get distracted at the most inopportune moments, allowing Katie to unleash her wickedness around the house unmonitored. Because neither the parents nor their children acknowledge that Katie has obviously been taken over by a sinister spirit, The Mummy waits for the characters to catch up with the audience; a fatal mistake.

Reynor and Costa struggle to play this foolish pair, with their task becoming even more difficult once Charlie and Larissa unconvincingly confront their guilt over being unable to prevent Katie’s kidnapping. Molina and Roy are unmemorable as Katie’s siblings, who are mostly there to be tricked by their sister’s malevolent schemes. The strongest performance belongs to May Calamawy as a Cairo cop who does her own investigation into what happened to Katie in Egypt. The Moon Knight star brings smarts to a film too quick to choose scares over sense.

Cronin has not lost his ability to startle viewers with gruesome, gritty set pieces and, although it’s hard to care about such thinly-developed characters, The Mummy puts you through the wringer during an intense finale. Cronin and Evil Dead Rise cinematographer Dave Garbett give the scenes a sickly, smudgy sheen, utilising low light to make the family’s house look haunted — which, in a sense, it is, by this young woman who has been overtaken by an unfathomable evil. Cronin draws from images of the occult — not to mention classic horror films — with a fiendish gusto. But unlike what happens to poor Katie, his Mummy never invades your soul.