Lee Cronin’s The Mummy review
Two hours spent answering a question you already know the answer to.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Directed by Lee Cronin
Written by Lee Cronin
Starring Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Veronica Falcon, May Elghety, Shylo Molina and Lily Sullivan
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
There’s always a bit of trepidation when you see the Blumhouse production logo at this point. This version of The Mummy has a lot of hands in the pot…but Blumhouse, in particular, has had a rough go of it lately. The production house made its name with genre releases like The Purge and Paranormal Activity franchises. Lately, however, it’s been kind of a disaster…creatively speaking. Sure, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movies make a lot of money…but they two releases range from bad to awful. When Blumhouse isn’t destroying its own budding M3GAN franchise, it’s running out dreck like The Exorcist: Believer, Imaginary, AfrAId and Night Swim. Long story short…the trepidation is earned.
2026’s take on The Mummy seems to be at least somewhat aware of it too. Not just because Blumhouse is pretty buried on the production company roll call…and not just because it’s abbreviated as BH in the opening titles to try and mask itself…but mostly because they really want you to know this is a Lee Cronin movie. His name isn’t just above the title…it’s an official part of it. With so many movies titled The Mummy out there…it makes sense to differentiate it. Though I’m not sure how many people know the name Lee Cronin enough to be swayed by its presence. Cronin wrote and directed Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. It’s his follow up to the very successful Evil Dead Rise. For the most part…it even feels like one. Though it may have slightly more in common with The Exorcist than the Necronomicon.
As mentioned, there is no shortage of Mummy-based movies out there. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are gearing up for a legacy sequel to the ones you probably think of first. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy isn’t like that series at all. It’s a little more like the Universal Monsters version…but just in the way that it’s actually a horror movie and not an Indiana Jones knock-off. Cronin provides more of the gooeyness and squeamish parts that made his Evil Dead Rise work so well. The 97 minute runtime of that movie also helped. The Mummy would have benefited from following the lesson of the latter as well. This is a long movie that feels like one. Mostly because of it’s central “what happened to Katie?” hook. If you’ve seen the marketing or the movie…you’ve seen that pushed as the central question of the story. It is…and that’s a problem.
Specifically, the problem is that the answer of “what happened to Katie” is obvious from the start. Only one thing could have happened to Katie. But the movie seems to think this is a grand mystery deserving of dramatic payoff two hours into the story. It isn’t. You know from the opening scene what’s going to happen to Katie. It involves a tomb being opened and a mummy coming back to life. We know from just the trailer that Katie disappears one day and returns years later as a creepy, mummy like thing. How many things does Lee Cronin believe we could think happened to Katie? Well, after the length of Evil Dead Rise spent investigating that “question” …The Mummy unveils what happened to Katie as if it’s a dramatic revelation. A payoff you’ve been waiting for. It’s very odd.
The climax of the movie feels off too. The story finds a perfectly fitting ending for itself…and then continues for another scene. As if someone tacked on a second ending to undo the first one…even if it doesn’t feel as natural or realistic. I’m using realistic loosely…this is a movie about an evil spirit infecting a little girl. Oh no…I’ve spoiled what happened to Katie. Now you’ll never be surprised! While I may be tempted to blame the Blumhouse’s of the world for the tacked on totally Blumhouse style ending…how can it be anyone but Cronin? This is Lee Cronin’s The Mummy…directed by Lee Cronin…from a screenplay by Lee Cronin…executive produced by Lee Cronin.
The funny part is that the actual, obvious Lee Cronin parts are what work best in The Mummy. I mentioned it has a bit of The Exorcist in here…and Cronin actually makes that work for a change. Picture The Exorcist if Pazuzu managed to corrupt the people around Regan at the same time it was pulling its creepy little girl act. That’s what the horror parts of The Mummy feel like. Gory, bloody and mostly effective use of creepy kid horror. Katie is like a quieter Regan…inflicting more physical and emotional violence upon the people around her. This includes quasi-possessing her siblings and making the entire household a handful for their poor parents.
The truth is that there is probably a really good 97 minute version of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy here. Unfortunately, the 133 minute version we get is simply too long and too interested in the wrong things to make what works best as effective as it could be. Maybe Lee Cronin needed some more oversight and a more involved editor. Maybe he had too much oversight and the movie he envisioned is competing with the boring one you’d expect from certain production companies involved with the film. Either way, the result isn’t worth running to the theaters for. But it’s probably worth a rental with some fast forwarding involved.
Scare Value
The mystery of what happened to Katie is a befuddling thing to center Lee Cronin’s The Mummy around. I could use a full oral history about how that became not only the central plot but also the lead marketing concept here. There is no mystery. It’s exactly what you assumed when you first saw the trailer. What’s most frustrating is that there is a solid horror movie in here somewhere. Everything that works about The Mummy comes from it. Unfortunately, it’s too often drowned out by stretches concentrating on literally anything else. Cronin digs up something worthwhile…he just digs up too much filler with it.
2.5/5
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Link
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