Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is one of those films where I walked out thinking, I like this more in theory than in execution.
It is called The Mummy, but honestly that already feels like the first misdirection. This is not really a classic mummy movie. It is more like Cronin took his Evil Dead Rise instincts, buried them under Egyptian mythology, and then tried to stitch a family drama on top of it. Somewhere in there, it does work. Just not all the time.
The runtime is 2 hours 13 minutes and I really felt it. That is probably the first thing that sticks. Not the scares, not the lore, but the fact that this story did not need to breathe this long.
What I actually liked
I do want to start with the good because there is genuinely a lot I respect here.
The lore is probably my favourite part. They actually went deep into Egyptian mythology instead of the usual pop culture mummy stuff. No recycled Ahkmenrah type references, no lazy Cleopatra angle. It feels like they were digging properly into something older and more textured. Pun intended, but also not really a pun because that is literally what the film feels like it is doing.
I also really liked that parts of it are actually set in Egypt and people speak Arabic. Small detail, but it grounds the whole thing more than I expected. It stops it from feeling like just another Hollywood version of an ancient world.
There is also a stretch in the early and middle part of the film where it feels more like an investigative thriller. You are slowly uncovering what is going on, piecing things together, and I actually enjoyed that pacing. That is probably where the film is at its strongest.
And I cannot lie, when Cronin lets it go fully into chaos mode, it is fun. There are maybe 20 to 25 minutes of proper Evil Dead style energy here. The reanimated corpse popping out of the coffin in the third act, the grandmother sliding off the car and getting absolutely destroyed, those moments are wild. If this was framed differently, you would probably be laughing at how insane it gets.
It is also very clearly a love letter to older horror. You can feel The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, even The Shining in the visual language. Cronin’s style is strong. Sometimes a bit too much, especially with the split diopter shots, but there are frames here that genuinely feel like nightmare fuel.
What did not work for me
Now the problem is everything around that.
The biggest issue is pacing. This really should not be 2 hours 13 minutes. There is not enough narrative weight for that runtime. It starts to drag in a way that makes you feel every minute.
The tone also keeps shifting. One moment it wants to be mythology driven horror, then investigative thriller, then full possession chaos, then family drama. None of them fully settle.
And I really did not enjoy the family subplot. At all. It felt like the weakest part of the film. The dad is basically just stoic reaction face the entire time. The mum unfortunately falls into that very frustrating horror trope of ignoring everything happening in front of her. I get that horror needs bad decisions, but this felt like it was pushing it too far.
By the end, I was actually more annoyed at the characters than scared for them.
There are also some logic things that kept pulling me out. Like how contained everything is supposed to be despite very public, very extreme events happening. It just feels like the world is selectively blind when it needs to be.
And the CGI is inconsistent. Some of the possession and body horror stuff works, but the wildlife effects in particular really stood out in a bad way.
Spoilers section
This part is spoilers.
The more I think about it, the more I realise the film wants to be Evil Dead Rise energy but does not earn it in the same way.
In Evil Dead Rise, you care about the characters first. So when things go wrong, it hits harder. Here, I never really reached that point. So when the horror ramps up, it is visually fun but emotionally flat.
Even the levitating child stuff, which should be disturbing, ends up feeling distant because I was not really invested in the family in the first place.
There is also this constant feeling that nobody outside the house reacts properly. Like the world just resets itself after every insane event. That took me out of it more than once.
Even the house layout felt weirdly exaggerated. I swear there are hallways and crawlspaces in there that make no architectural sense at all.
Overall
I do not hate this movie. I actually think I respect it more than I enjoyed it.
When it leans into its Evil Dead instincts, it is fun, messy and properly grotesque. When it tries to be serious mythology horror or emotional family drama, it loses me.
It is a 5/10 for me. Watchable, sometimes really entertaining, but also way too long and not as committed to its gross-out side as I expected.
I do not think I will rewatch it, mostly because of the runtime. But there are scenes I will remember, and I do like the early lore-heavy part before it turns into standard possession horror.
Rotten Tomatoes sits at 48% critics and 77% audience at the time I am writing this. That split actually makes sense.
Overall, it feels like a film that had something really fun buried inside it, but did not fully dig it out.
Watched this movie in IMAX hall.
