Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)
Directed by: Lee Cronin
Premise: An American child (Natalie Grace) is abducted in Egypt. Eight years later she is found among ancient Egyptian artifacts but she has not aged and suffers from deformities.
What Works: There is a whole genre of mummy films including Universal’s monster pictures from the 1930s and 40s, the Hammer films of the 1950s and 1960s, and Stephen Sommers’ pictures of the 1990s and 2000s. Most of those mummy movies reiterate the same premise with western explorers uncovering a forbidden tomb and unleashing an undead creature that seeks a mate. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy deserves credit for bringing a different approach to the material. Where many of them were campy or funny, 2026’s The Mummy is very horrific. Filmmaker Lee Cronin has a distinct visual style and his mummy film has a lot of interesting and creepy visuals. He often makes use of a split diopter technique in which two parts of the image have a different focal plane, allowing objects in the foreground and the background to be in focus simultaneously. This technique is used effectively and The Mummy is very creepy. The filmmakers also demonstrate a willingness to terrorize the audience. There are some gruesome gore effects and—the ending notwithstanding—the film has a brutality that’s rare in mainstream Hollywood horror pictures.
What Doesn’t: As much as Lee Cronin distinguishes his mummy film from others in this subgenre, he also imitates other horror movies, especially The Exorcist and The Evil Dead. (Cronin’s last film was 2023’s Evil Dead Rise and there has been speculation that The Mummy might be a spinoff of that franchise.) The similarities are beyond homage and The Mummy often feels generic. The filmmakers use the Egyptian history of mummification without any regard for the cultural context or meaning of that tradition. The movie is sometimes confusing. Supernatural stories tend to have a set of rules but 2026’s The Mummy plays fast and loose with its own internal logic. The film also suffers from some glaring credibility issues. This girl is found after being missing for years and she looks like a living corpse but the family brings their daughter directly home instead of taking her to a hospital or consulting a doctor. This continues even as the girl’s body literally decomposes in front of her family. The Mummy is too long. It runs 134 minutes and it feels that length especially in the ending. The conclusion was reportedly reshot and it feels that way with an epilogue that is drawn out and largely undoes the emotional impact of the climax.
Bottom Line: Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a scary but compromised film. It manages to frighten but it’s also overlong and borrows much from possession films.
Episode: #1096 (April 26, 2026)