Reimagining the Mummy: How Lee Cronin's Reboot Transforms Horror
By Published Apr 20, 2026, 11:29 AM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2026. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2026. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
While might be a solid horror movie in its own right, Blumhouse’s franchise reboot suffers from one major issue that a lot of viewers predicted when its earliest trailer dropped. Even more so than most horror franchises, have changed considerably over the years. Since the series started way back in 1932, it is no surprise that their style, tone, and content have fundamentally changed in almost a century of cinema history.
However, that doesn’t mean that there are no similarities between 1932’s The Mummy, 1959’s The Mummy, , and even 2017’s much-maligned reboot The Mummy. All the earlier movies in the series blend action-adventure stories with straightforward fantasy horror, telling the tale of archaeologists inadvertently waking up the eponymous Egyptian monsters and suffering as a result. With globe-trotting locations, elements of classic adventure stories, and comic relief, all these Mummy movies feature some level of action tropes alongside their horror storylines.
The same is not true for Blumhouse’s R-rated reboot of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, which aims for a much more unapologetic, unfiltered horror tone. Although there are some moments of pitch-black comedy in this re-imagining, viewers should not expect any heroic derring-do, charming comedic relief, or swashbuckling set-pieces. Like the director’s earlier effort, Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a brutal, relentless horror movie, and, unfortunately, it’s not much of a mummy movie despite its title.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Is Really An Exorcism Movie In Disguise
After a brief, creepy prologue, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy begins with a journalist, Charlie, and his wife, Larissa, discovering that their young daughter, Katie, has disappeared without a trace, kidnapped by a shady figure. Eight years later, the child shows up alive, but not at all well, in a sarcophagus on board a plane. After the plane's mysterious crash leaves no other survivors, Charlie and Larissa bring Katie home in the hopes of reintroducing their traumatized daughter to normal life.
From thereon out, it becomes increasingly, unavoidably obvious that something is very wrong with the couple’s beloved Katie, and whatever emerged from the sarcophagus might be wearing her skin, but it’s not the little girl they know. While it takes a while for viewers to find out , Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is no drag in the meantime. The horror movie is gory, twisty, scary, and sometimes even hard to watch. The problem is, it’s also not a mummy movie.
From Katie’s kidnapping to the fact that the movie’s so-called “Mummy” is a living child, not an artifact that is hundreds of years old, the reboot ignores the basic idea of what a mummy is and what makes them scary. All the earlier Mummy movies offered their own spins on the franchise’s basic premise, but Cronin’s stretches the plot’s conceit until it is unrecognizable. With a creepy child who has been warped by supernatural influences at its center, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is more of an exorcism movie than a Mummy movie.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Doesn’t Do The Title Character Justice
To be fair, as far as exorcism movies go, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy might be the best one that major mainstream horror franchises have served viewers in a while. , while The Ritual and The Pope’s Exorcist both took great ideas and turned them into scare-free star vehicles. In contrast, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is as genuinely spooky and viscerally upsetting as 2026’s indie horror hit Bring Her Back, and deserves to be commended for this.
The problem is, this plants Lee Cronin’s The Mummy squarely in the same wheelhouse as Cronin’s earlier successes Evil Dead Rise and The Hole in the Ground while ignoring the unique appeal of the Mummy franchise. Like Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy turns a sweet, undeserving heroine into a terrifying monster and sets her loose on her unsuspecting family. Like Croning's 2019 indie hit The Hole in the Ground, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy turns a child protagonist into a paranormal threat that threatens to kill its parent.
Yes, Katie is creepy. However, she also wouldn’t be out of place in Bring Her Back, The Exorcist: Believer, or even Cronin’s own Evil Dead Rise. What Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is missing is an actual Imhotep/Kharis-style traditional mummy, and this contributes to the sense that the director had a vision for a scary, original horror story, but one that only incidentally engages with Egyptian folklore, sarcophagi, archaeology, and all the other story elements that make a mummy movie.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Is Still A Solid R-Rated Horror Movie
Compared to , Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is not a bad movie at all. It is thrilling, unpredictable, and probably the grossest horror movie to receive a wide release since 2026’s boundary-pushing slasher sequel, Terrifier 3. Still, the reboot does feel like a wasted opportunity when Lee Cronin’s The Mummy could have been an R-rated take on the existing franchise that used its familiar tropes and story elements in darker, bloodier ways.
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An R-rated Mummy movie that is set in the desert and follows a group of archaeologists excavating a cursed tomb might sound disappointingly straightforward and unimaginative, but it is worth thinking about before dismissing this. John Carpenter barely changed the setting, the story, and the characters of 1951’s The Thing from Another World when he remade the paranoid sci-fi classic as 1982’s The Thing.
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Blumhouse's new R-rated The Mummy movie officially sets a Rotten Tomatoes record, as it dethrones Brendan Fraser's iconic movie after 27 years.
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What Carpenter did do was make the most of dramatically loosened censorship guidelines and vastly improved practical effects to turn a chintzy, harmless sci-fi horror into one of the most enduring-ly brutal, brilliant, and bleak horror movies of all time. Cronin’s earlier movies already proved that he could make characters who came back wrong consistently creepy. However, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy could potentially have seen him make a seemingly outdated, corny setup into something genuinely frightening, so it’s disappointing to see the movie avoid engaging with its predecessors.
Cast
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Jack Reynor Charlie -
Laia Costa Larissa
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