Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

Lee Cronin's The Mummy takes a familiar horror icon and approaches it from a much more personal angle. Rather than beginning with archaeologists being chased through a tomb, the film focuses on a family whose missing daughter returns under terrifying circumstances. I liked that decision because it immediately creates a conflict between wanting to protect someone you love and recognizing that something is terribly wrong.

I expected the movie to be gory after Evil Dead Rise, and Cronin certainly doesn't hold back. There are brutal moments, grotesque transformations and imagery that made me wince. But the body horror isn't simply an excuse to show off effects. The story makes the threat personal because the monster is someone the family has spent years hoping to see again.

The performances are important to making that setup work. The family members feel connected, and I believed the mix of relief, grief and fear that comes with the daughter's return. Natalie Grace has a difficult role, and I thought her physical presence was a big part of why the horror was effective. You can see why the characters struggle to accept what is happening even when the evidence becomes impossible to ignore.

I also liked that the movie creates a mystery around the girl's disappearance and return. There is something to follow beyond the next disturbing scene, and that keeps the story moving. Cronin's visual style is recognizable, but he isn't simply repeating the apartment-house setting or structure of Evil Dead Rise.

There are moments when the movie pushes its imagery almost too far, and I can see why some viewers would be turned off by how upsetting it becomes. It's a relentless experience in places. I don't think every choice is perfect, but I appreciate that the film commits to its unsettling premise rather than taking the safer approach of a conventional mummy adventure.

For me, The Mummy is a memorable piece of family-centered supernatural horror. It's nasty, inventive and surprisingly emotional, with the human relationships making the monster much more frightening than it would be on its own.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy was one of those movies where I thought I knew how scared I was going to be, and then it found completely new ways to upset me. I'd already watched his other movies, so I expected some blood and body horror. This was still more intense than I was ready for.

The story about a family getting their missing daughter back made everything especially difficult. I could understand why they wanted to believe she was okay, even when things started feeling wrong. If somebody you loved had been missing for years, you wouldn't want to think something terrible had happened to them. That made the situation sad as well as frightening.

The little girl was incredibly creepy. There were moments when she barely needed to do anything to make me nervous, and other moments when the effects were so gross that I had to look away. The way people moved and the things happening to their bodies were almost too much for me. I definitely spent some time covering my eyes and ears.

I also liked that there was a mystery. I wanted to understand what had happened to this girl and how the family might deal with it. That gave me a reason to keep watching even when I was frightened. I wasn't sitting there waiting for the movie to get interesting. I was completely involved in the story.

What made the film hard was how personal the horror felt. It's one thing to have a monster chasing strangers. It's another when the monster is somebody the characters love. You can tell they don't want to fight what they think might still be their daughter, and I felt terrible watching them face that decision.

I know some people enjoy very graphic horror, and there are certainly effects here that those fans will appreciate. For me, it was almost overwhelming in places. But I can't say the movie was boring or badly made. The actors were good, and the story kept me interested the whole time.

I barely made it through some of those scenes, but I can recognize that The Mummy was a powerful and effective horror movie. It scared me in more ways than I expected.