Publication Date: 04-21-2026

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) review

Dir. Lee Cronin

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Blumhouse’s social media team has gone to great lengths informing people that Brendan Fraser is not in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. Where was everyone when it was time to ask if Lee Cronin was in Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy?

With how frequently studios want to resurrect age-old properties for sequeling, rebooting, and reimagining purposes, the more common it should be to have the director, or at least screenwriter, brand their work in some way that differentiates from the predecessors. Because Fraser’s Mummy series took rebranding to new levels and turned the Hammer Horror series from the 1930s into a big-budget, swords-and-sandals affair, the original Mummy from 1932 is all but a distant memory for those of us whose diet don’t still consist of Svengoolie Saturdays and movies of the black-and-white persuasion.

That being said, usually when a director assigns himself to the film’s title — Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Lee Daniels, Tyler Perry — there’s a presumed familiarity with their work, and a certain level of expectations. Cronin’s directorial debut, The Hole in the Ground (2019), is unseen by me. Like most, I went into his iteration of The Mummy with Evil Dead Rise as my only benchmark for the 44-year-old Irish filmmaker. If you missed that belated revival of Sam Raimi’s iconic series, you might be in for some surprises with Cronin’s latest, for at times it plays like a rehash of the same hybridization of shock value and familial connection.

The story begins with a couple leaving their children alone in an Egyptian farmhouse to check on an ancient sarcophagus that resides in the basement, where a mummified corpse is awakened. Cut to Cairo, where the temporarily relocated Cannon family, led by news reporter dad Charlie (Jack Reynor) and mother Larissa (Laia Costa), live apart from their primary dwelling in Albuquerque. The couple’s eldest daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace) mysteriously disappears during a sandstorm, resulting in a hack investigation and days, weeks, and eventually months with no clues as to her whereabouts.

Eight years later, Charlie and Larissa are back in New Mexico with their younger children, Sebastian (Shylo Molina) and Maud (Billie Roy), still with a gaping hole in their heart. Egyptian detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy in a strong performance) has remained steadfastly consumed by the case, and receives a break when Katie is found to be alive in a horrific plane crash. Horribly disfigured, catatonic, and partially mummified, the doctor recommends rest and relaxation — like my nurse mother, who gave all her patients “good” medicine while I had to settle for ibuprofen and fluids.

Cronin’s film is one of those where a character overhears his daughter clicking her tongue and chomping her teeth, runs to his desk, rummages for a conveniently placed book on “Morse Code,” and proceeds to decode her message flawlessly. This is also one of those films that same person who decoded the message then has the time and patience to sift through his daughter’s notebooks, letters, birthday cards, and more — conveniently stored in a large chest — before finding the lone leaflet that shares the same message. Oh, and of course it’s the very last item in the pile.

If these contrivances irk you, you’d be wise to skip Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. But rest assured, this is not the way it begins. Cronin actually takes the time to humanize the dynamics of the Cannon family. The child actors are convincingly in their sibling-like squabbles, and Reynor and Costa are individually good enough to overcome their complete lack of chemistry. I’m not trying to be snide, I promise. Cronin sets the table nicely by giving us time to breathe with the family, but paradoxically, once Katie is discovered alive, the film begins to lose its sense of self.

Rather than this feeling like a brand new, up-and-coming filmmaker’s vision for The Mummy, it instead feels like an assembly of ideas. Cronin’s “Mummy” has actually more in common with The Exorcist, and that would be fine, if my first thought wasn’t the ill-fated failure that was The Exorcist: Believer. So much of it is familiar: the head-turning, violent convulsing, supernatural strength that allows a diminutive teen girl that power to throw her grandmother (Verónica Falcón) across her bedroom.

Whatever grace installed amidst the gloom in the first hour becomes more of a trudge of genre clichés by the second. Cronin doubles down on the gnarly close-ups in effort to make you squeamish. Instead of a cheese grater, however, the star of the show is some of the most wretchedly wooden toenails on the most sickening pair of clodhoppers your pupils have had the displeasure of peeping. So much of The Mummy is unpleasant to look at in a gross-out way, the likes of which I have no inherent problem, but it seems like flesh wounds and mangled extremities are Cronin’s crutch for when he can’t find another direction. Bryan Shaw’s editing already contorts the picture with some awkward shifts in setting, suggesting something of a lobotomy in post. Maybe after all, this was not as much Cronin’s Mummy as it was Blumhouse’s? Given their recent track record, I’d still place bets on Cronin. It’s an opportune time for him and his agent to pull something of a Ryan Coogler, and badger a major studio for a “one for me” movie behooved by his original story. More importantly than Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, we need Lee Cronin’s vision refined as a filmmaker.

Starring: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Verónica Falcón, Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy, Emily Mitchell, Dean Allen Williams. Directed by: Lee Cronin.

My review of The Mummy (1932)