Why is Lee Cronin's The Mummy called that? Also, why is it so terrible?

Walking land the theatre gangway with a bucketful of zea mays everta in deal, ready to catch Lee Cronin's The Mummy, no one would blame you for having at least one gigantic question.

"Who the heck is Lee Cronin?"

Of course, you probably have other questions: Namely where is Brendan Fraser? What (if anything) does this have to do with 1999's The Mummy or the failed 2017 relaunch of Universal's Dark Universe? How exactly did this Warner Bros. Flick get made if it isn't connected to Universal's past Mummy franchise and upcoming reboot?

And again, who in the crypt is Lee Cronin?

Well, he's the movie's writer-director, but let's leave all the behind-the-scenes messes for later. First, let's focus on the various messes Cronin opted to dump in front of the camera — because boy, are there more than enough to deal with in this undead dirge.

First, the plot. As the film opens, we follow an Egyptian family full of laughter and fun — that is, other than a bitter mother (Hayat Kamille) who is inexplicably hostile to her children's smiles, and spookily unphased by their pet bird suddenly oozing blood from its mouth.

Wait, no! Actually, we follow an American family living in Egypt. There's Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) the up-and-coming journalist attempting to secure a better life back in New York for his family, including his pregnant wife Larissa (Laia Costa) and grade school-aged children Sebastián (Dean Allen Williams) and Katie (Emily Mitchell) — who soon disappears into a convenient Cairo dust storm.

Wait again — this may instead be about Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy) the hard-as-nails investigator tasked with finding Katie, even as her embittered bosses have given up on ever accomplishing real police work. Or no, it's still about the Cannon family. Just eight years in the future this time — and so full of different actors it feels like yet another cast of characters to arbitrarily follow. 

There's Charlie and Larissa still, but now teenage Sebastián (Shylo Molina), grandmother Carmen (Veronica Falcón), new addition and loveable scamp Maud (Billie Roy) — and suddenly, the rediscovery of a now nearly-adult Katie (Natalie Grace). 

You see, through a complicated plot involving human smuggling, ancient curses and a lead-lined sarcophagus, a deeply scarred and nearly catatonic Katie is back. Now with a creepy, throat-croaking scream, a penchant for crawling around in the walls of the family home — and an insatiable hankering for beetles, bugs and all things slimy.

Which (finally) launches the actual story at play here: a by-the-numbers possession drama wrapped in the drooping bandages of an Egyptian mummy story. That is, with the occasional gesture toward some amorphous theme involving family loyalty, mistrust and abandonment … or something.

These themes are cobbled together here with all the specificity and intention of an English essay started 10 minutes before it's due. Which is perhaps not all that surprising, given the movie's backstory. 

When the project was first announced, Cronin, the director of Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise, told the Hollywood Reporter, "This will be unlike any Mummy movie you ever laid eyeballs on before.” But he was likely aware that this Blumhouse-produced, Warner Bros. Distributed production could be seen as a crossover.

And for good reason: Tightly tied to the concept of movie monsters since its early slate of films in the 1930s and 40s — including, of course, The Mummy — Universal's association with the undead is nearly as old as the movies themselves. 

That was only reinforced with the 1999 Brendan Fraser reboot and its sequels. But the 2017 revisit with Tom Cruise wasn't quite so well received. Intended as Universal's first step in reintroducing an expansive franchise dubbed "The Dark Universe," Cruise's The Mummy reportedly flopped so hard that those plans were scrapped. 

In response, Universal instead partnered with horror auteur Jason Blum's Blumhouse production company — with whom they have a "first look" deal — to produce lower-budget riffs on their monster back catalogue. That resulted in the surprise success of 2020's The Invisible Man, which was then followed up with 2025's decidedly less successful Wolf Man.

But in actuality, there's seemingly no connection between Universal, their long line of monster movies and Cronin's creation. It's all merely conjecture and rumours — directly supported by the labyrinth of behind-the-scenes studio connections and the similar titles — all of which is bound to boost Lee Cronin's The Mummy at the box office.

That confusion is also serendipitously timed, as Universal is once again rebooting its Mummy franchise — this time actually with Brendan Fraser. Given that, Cronin, Blumhouse and Warner must know a certain level of confusion is basically guaranteed. 

If you're conspiracy minded, you may even believe the rumours that Lee Cronin's The Mummy arrived in its current state after it bombed so hard with test audiences that it was reworked, resulting in a tepid and stereotypical possession story hiding behind the vague concept of Egyptian culture.

In that reality, the frantic fixes led to what we have now: A cobbled together zombie-project that kept just enough mummy stuff to draw in at least a few confused audience members who might think they're actually getting another heaping helping of The Mummy they knew and loved — or at the very least, something glancingly related.

But Cronin has denied that any terrible test reactions altered their plans: seemingly, this was always the movie he intended to make. 

Which is bizarre given the result. Outside of the almost impressively clumsy set-up, Lee Cronin's The Mummy feels almost as malformed as it is mean-spirited. After finally landing on the tired possessed-kid plot cribbed straight from better movies like The Omen and Hereditary, Cronin's inability to innovate begins to shine through.

Once the giggling, demonic Katie returns, the movie feels like an excuse for its characters to use each other as punching bags — and occasionally batting practice — all while ignoring any plot or character development that would justify it. Relatives beating and taunting one another for increasingly off-putting laughs feels less and less like a story, and more like a hollow attempt to transgress and provoke.

While hitting virtually every demonic horror cliché in the book (from culture fetishization, to hasty and unearned grossout scenes dropped throughout with no rhyme or reason, to a dusty VHS full of horrors and about 20 random children doing the look-through-their-lashes Smile smile), Cronin's only tricks are odd camera angles and incest references. 

Playing a "drink every time you see a split-diopter shot" here would likely lead to liver failure. Playing a similar game every time one family member says or does something off-puttingly sexual to another family member would lead to you hugging the toilet. 

That is, if you weren't already. Never should a horror movie be criticized for dousing its characters with a little blood and gore, but doing so with even the tiniest consideration for how it serves the plot, or whether the suspense has been set up beforehand, or whether the slightly nausea-inducing set piece actually makes sense within the context of the movie's universe, would help.

Criticizing a movie like this for creating a monster who acts unstoppable one moment and inexplicably self-sacrificing the next, or for showing a little girl cussing out her teacher, or a father discovering a melting pool of acid under his daughter's bed, only to never follow up on these threads, feels like an exercise in futility. After all, it's just an excuse to see some blood splattering the wall, isn't it? 

But Cronin's writing seems to stretch for something like Sinister, Weapons or Bring Her Back — a family-based horror exploring the screaming terror a parent feels the minute they bring a fragile life into an uncaring world.

While those other titles prove you can use horror to tell those stories, Lee Cronin's The Mummy merely instructs that putting all your eggs in the same disgust basket will pretty much scupper any chances of being incisive, entertaining or palatable. 

But hey, at least it's gross. 

Senior Writer

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