Jack Reynor in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Mummies are one of cinema’s most enduring monsters, from Karl Freund’s 1932 classic starring Boris Karloff, to the 1999 bisexual masterpiece starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, to, er, Tom Cruise’s failed blockbuster experiment in 2017. Now, though, mummies are coming back not through Universal and their classic monster movies, but through the horror collaboration of Blumhouse and Atomic Monster. Irish horror monger Lee Cronin is in charge this time, and he brings a family-oriented and super gross vision to life in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

Cronin writes and directs the film, which stars Jack Reynor—the bear suit boyfriend from Midsommar, horror directors love torturing this guy on screen—as television journalist Charlie Cannon. While reporting from Egypt, Charlie’s nine-year-old daughter, Katie (Natalie Grace, and Emily Mitchell as young Katie), disappears from their garden. Eight years later, she is found following a plane crash in Egypt. The plane crash, by the way, is an incredible visual. The Mummy is a decently looking horror movie, but there are a handful of shots where Cronin, aided by cinematographer Dave Garbett, puts together something really cool and interesting, and the plane crash is one of them.

When Katie is returned home, her family engages in a game called “is Katie messed up because of years of torture, or is she obviously possessed”. Charlie’s wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), is just so glad to have her daughter home, ensconced in her childlike bedroom, that she overlooks every red flag of a clear possession happening, but Charlie is like, “I don’t know, seems suspicious.” The family begins to fracture as Katie’s super obviously demonic spirit corrodes the Cannon family from the inside.

Because this film is not part of Universal’s monster canon but is still built on the same mythological lines, it is interesting to see how Cronin twists and adapts the mummy myth to his own purpose. Yes, it’s a mummy movie, but it’s also a possession horror, and Cronin has a lot of fun blending the two tropes. He also has a lot of fun with gore. This is a GROSS movie. Katie is always making a bunch of gross sounds (demon red flag number one, demons are never like, into yacht rock, they’re always into sounds like garbage disposals and breaking teeth). There is a lot of gnarly body horror, so if gore isn’t your thing, The Mummy will not be for you. I have a pretty high threshold, and I was flinching regularly throughout the film.

The film also doesn’t go super heavy on the ancient Egypt of it all, so if you’re hoping for a Indiana Jones-style archaeological romp, this is not it. Honestly, I sort of wonder if Cronin wanted to make a demon movie and had to slap a mummy skin on it to get it made, but he does throw in some fun ancient Egyptian grace notes, such as the design of the creepy sarcophagus that entombs the mummy. It is an eerie design, the kind of immediate bad-vibes build that lets you know no one should be f-cking with this sarcophagus. It’s also nice to see a mummy movie that acknowledges that the ancient Egyptians had forms of writing other than hieroglyphs. Points for that.

If you’re looking for an elevated meaning to the film, I guess you could say something about the sacrifices parents make for their children, but really, Cronin isn’t doing the elevated horror thing here. He’s just making a solid scary movie, with some good jump scares, some really excellent practical effects, and a lot of effluvia. There is also an EXCELLENT and haunting use of diegetic noise throughout the film. Screams, howls, chants, and whispers are interpolated throughout the soundtrack, often barely legible through dialogue and music, but they’re there, and they are effective. It creates a presence within the film as if the film itself is haunted.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is an interesting hybrid of monster and possession movie, and it is sort of funny that the entire premise rests on a family being so relieved to get their missing child back that they don’t question obvious red flags until it’s way too late. That’s one way for the demons to slip through! Cronin successfully blends horror, humor, and viscera to update the mummy myth for The Exorcist generation. It’s a surprisingly smooth blend of tropes that allows Cronin to use the best parts of both mythologies to maximize scares. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy probably won’t be anyone’s bisexual awakening, but it will definitely make you hate teeth!

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy will play exclusively in theaters from April 17, 2026.