Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) 💀🎥🎞

This ain’t your daddy’s or mummies Brendan Fraser Mummy movie

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⚠️ Content Warning ⚠️

This film contains extreme and graphic horror content that may be disturbing to viewers.

Expect:

A movie about a child being kidnapped and their parents having to move on for 8 years.

Prolonged scenes of intense gore and body horror

Multiple scenes of projectile vomiting

Graphic depictions of injury, including skin tearing, exposed flesh, and mutilation of a 12 year old girl

Disturbing imagery involving children in violent and traumatic situations

Repeated use of gross-out visuals (vomit, insects, bodily fluids, and decay)

Psychological distress and possession themes involving family members

Moments of crude, uncomfortable, and inappropriate dialogue

A consistently mean-spirited tone that prioritizes shock over restraint

Also this movie has quite a bit of foot related gross scenes, to the point im starting to think Lee Cronin might have a foot fetish.

This is not a light horror experience. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

Basically this movie will test your patience and boundaries really quick, and trust me this film will make you uncomfortable very quickly, make no mistake. So if you cant stomach any that? Maybe don’t go watch it or read this.

🎬 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

Did any of that scream a mummy movie to y’all? If not then your correct, also you have come to the right place, don’t worry stick around and all will make sense, or won’t.

Safe to say the marketing for this movie got really weird. For instance, they made a giant mummy prop. Yeah say what now?

Told you it’s weird, that’s the type of thing you ride down the street, seeing and questioning what you just saw. Also, they made a billboard with a three d image. Sarcophagus and mummy on it.

One of the coolest marketing was the stone pyramid.They put in what I think is a museum.

Yeah I actually think that’s kinda cool.

But by far the weirdest one was a one hour.Youtube video of the sarcophagus with creepy images, just popping up. Yeah this one’s bizarre.

So here’s the long one hour livestream they decided to do where it’s literally just a coffin and random creepy shots. I hope you enjoy being creeped out and bored out of your mind at the same time, because that’s exactly what it is.

If you ask me, I prefer the design of the sarcophagus in the twenty seventeen mummy movie. I mean, say what you will about that movie and I have a lot of thoughts on that movie. If you’re curious, go check out my review on that movie.But I do like the sarcophagus design a whole lot more better than that movie.And here’s why I will put an image right here

Yeah, and I said the marketing for this new mummy movie was weird. I take that back, This is weirder. I can’t imagine the idea that came to mind when they said, let’s make a giant building sized sarcophagus. Like who was the mind behind that decision?

I got to take a moment and give a shout out to the fan edited posters for this movie, because these posters are legit, some of the best posters i’ve seen compared to the official posters. For this movie and no, i’m not talking about the 2017 mummy film!

Told y’all these were amazing. Also, why didn’t you get any of these posters?As the main poster for this movie, why?Instead, did we get a generic face of a girl with her eyes?Closed that doesn’t scream a mummy movie. That’s just screams a detective movie.

Oh also heres the full interview DeadMeat did with James Wan, Jason Blum and Lee Cronin himself on stage. In this interview Lee Cronin does mention what a few of his inspirations were for this movie, so plz enjoy.

And oh yeah, here’s that clip they released online a month before the movie even came out, the whole sarcophagus opening scene with our introduction to Katie. Don’t blame me for spoilers, they already did that themselves. I couldn’t think of a better place to put it than here.

By the way, this movie is made by Lee Cronin, who gave us evil dead rise. It’s also code produced by james wan and his company, atomic monster.And also the movie is funded by jason blum and his studio blumhouse and also funded by warner brothers.

Yes, this is not a universal movie.This is a warner brothers movie. And yes, that really confused me right off the bat already. I was like, huh?

Btw I got to appreciate the major revival we’ve had in mummy and Egyptian media ever since The Mummy 2017 i thought the IP or genre has died off, but nope because since then we did have a bit of a hiatus but then

2023: we had TinTin Cigars Of Pharoah Video Game

2024: Indiana Jones And The Great Circle

2025: Amneti (an Indie horror game)

Now come all the way to now, we have

2026: Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Then come in 2 years well finally have

2028: The Mummy Brandon Frazier 4

Yeah what a time to be a mummy fan.

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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

This is supposed to be a horror take on The Mummy. A family loses their daughter in Egypt, and years later she’s found inside a sarcophagus. That’s the hook. That’s the idea. And honestly, it sounds really interesting.

The problem is the movie doesn’t know what it wants to be. It starts off feeling like a Mummy movie, then slowly turns into The Exorcist, and by the time you hit the third act it’s basically Evil Dead with sand.

Now I got to point out, when this was promoted it was promoted as a Mummy movie, and I must admit the first 25 min was really promising. We have Cairo, we have a sarcophagus, we have some creepy mummy imagery.

But after that, the rest of the film goes downhill from here, because god damn the film basically just becomes the exorcist, and I don’t want to hear this film is inspired by the exorcist. No this film down righ rips off the exorcist.

Heck at a certain point Lee Cronin starts ripping off himself, he ends up making a Evil Dead movie. Its almost like he didn’t want to make a Mummy movie, and yes I feel like I was cheated out of my money, was promised a mummy movie. And what do I get instead? A Exorcist Evil Dead movie, like seriously what are we doing here? Anyways lets move on and ill get into all my complaints soon.

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👥 Character Rundown

Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) is the dad, and honestly he’s probably the easiest character to side with in this whole movie because he is one of the only people in the house reacting like anything happening around him is not normal. He’s a news reporter, he’s trying to keep the family together, and once Katie comes back and starts acting like, well, that, he’s the one doing the actual investigating. He’s the one translating the Morse code, calling the detective, digging through clues, taking the skin strands to the professor, and actually trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Jack Reynor does a really good job here because he sells the panic, the guilt, the grief, and the slow realization that his daughter is not really his daughter anymore. He’s doing a lot of heavy lifting in this movie.

Larissa Cannon (Laia Costa) is the mom, and she’s probably the character that frustrated me the most even though I do understand what the movie is going for with her. She’s the one clinging the hardest to the idea that Katie can still be saved just through love and attention and keeping her home, and for a huge chunk of the movie she is in complete denial even when it is painfully obvious something is deeply wrong. That got on my nerves a lot, but Laia Costa still gives a really committed performance. She sells the grief of a mother who lost her daughter for eight years and then gets her back in the worst possible condition. So even though the writing for her drove me nuts, the performance itself is strong.

Katie Cannon (Natalie Grace) is the center of the entire movie and easily one of the best parts of it. Once she comes back older and mummified and possessed and all grey and waxy looking, she is genuinely unsettling to look at. Natalie Grace does a phenomenal job with the body language, the hunched posture, the facial expressions, the weird slow movement, the creepy stillness, and when the movie lets her just be eerie without overdoing it, she really works. Her design is also one of the better things in the movie. Her skin has that cracked, waxy, almost wrapping-like look to it later on, which finally starts making her feel like an actual mummy instead of just another possessed horror kid.

Young Katie Cannon also deserves credit because the younger actress has to carry some of the movie’s most upsetting material, especially in that ritual footage, and she does a really good job with the fear and panic. So honestly both actresses playing Katie did great work.

Sebastián Cannon (Shylo Molina) is the brother, and after the time jump he turns into the typical angsty teen sibling, but I actually thought he worked fine for what the movie needed him to do. He’s bitter, moody, clearly traumatized by what happened to his sister even before she comes back, and then once all the possession stuff starts happening, he gets dragged into it too. He’s not the deepest character in the movie, but he feels believable enough as the older brother who’s trying to act tough while all this insane stuff is happening around him.

Maud Cannon (Billie Roy) is the little sister, and she ends up being involved in a lot of the movie’s creepiest and grossest scenes. She’s the kid who gets the dentures in her mouth, the blood on the deviled eggs, the teeth pulling, the classroom scene, all of that. Billie Roy does a really good job because she makes the character feel like an actual little kid at first, which makes all the weird and creepy stuff that happens later hit even harder. She’s also important because a lot of the movie’s “family horror” angle gets filtered through her.

Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy) was one of my favorite characters in the movie because she feels like she belongs in a completely different and better version of this story. She’s the one doing the actual detective work, the one going to the farmhouse, the one connecting Layla to Katie, the one uncovering the tape, and the one helping explain the curse. Every time the movie cuts to her subplot, it actually starts feeling like an Egyptian horror mystery instead of just gross possession chaos in a house. May Calamawy plays her very seriously and grounded, and I wish the movie had leaned on her side of the story way more because that was the part that felt the most archaeological and the most “Mummy.”

Carmen, the Abuela (Verónica Falcón) is the grandmother, and yeah, her main trait is basically just “very religious.” The second this movie introduced her and had her doing prayers, I immediately knew exactly where this was heading because horror movies love doing that with grandmothers. That said, Verónica Falcón still gives the character warmth early on. The birthday cakes stuff was actually sweet. It just sucks that the movie turns her into one giant pile of mean-spirited gross-out material later.

Layla Khalil and Layla’s mother, the creepy ritual woman, are both interesting in concept and underwritten in execution. The mother is the one who kidnaps Katie and carries out the ritual, and the movie presents her like she has this long family burden of containing the demon, but it never really explains enough about her motivations to make her satisfying. She’s creepy, sure, and visually memorable, but the movie never gives her enough depth. Then there’s Layla herself, the daughter whose tongue was cut out. That is a genuinely disturbing reveal and one of the few times the movie drops a detail that actually made me go “okay, now that is interesting.” I just wish the movie did more with both of them.

The professor / archaeology teacher is only in the movie briefly, but honestly he’s a very important character because he’s one of the few people who actually helps make the movie feel like a mummy story. He’s the one who looks at the skin strands and explains that these aren’t hieroglyphics but heretical incantations meant to hold a demon at bay. He’s basically part of the better version of this movie that keeps trying to peek through the cracks.

Overall, I thought the cast did a really good job with what they were given. That’s part of what makes the movie frustrating. The actors are not the problem. The movie gave them a setup that could have led somewhere really cool, and a lot of them genuinely sell the fear, grief, and horror. The problem is that the writing keeps dragging them back into generic possession stuff, gross-out scenes, and weird dialogue that no actor on earth could fully save.

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⏱️ Pacing / Flow

The first 25 minutes are actually really good. The opening is creepy, the setup is effective, and it pulls you in.

Then the middle starts and it slowly begins to drag. Not just in pacing, but in content. It starts leaning way too hard into the gross factor, and scenes go on way longer than they need to.

Then the third act hits and everything just goes completely off the rails. It stops feeling like a story and starts feeling like a series of “how far can we push this” moments.

And on top of that, this movie is 2 hours and 14 minutes long. It did not need to be that long.

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✅ Pros

The locations and visuals are genuinely strong. Egypt and Mexico both feel authentic, and I appreciate that they actually cast actors that match those locations. That adds a lot.

The daytime desert atmosphere actually works. There’s something unsettling about horror happening in broad daylight with nowhere to hide, and the movie does use that to its advantage at times.

The mummy lore that is there is actually really interesting. The movie hints that mummification isn’t just for preservation, like there’s clearly something more going on with the wrappings and the layers. It feels like every layer actually matters, and messing with it has consequences. I’m not gonna say exactly what, because that’s part of the mystery, but it’s one of those ideas where you’re like okay… this is actually cool, why didn’t we get more of this?

Katie’s design later in the movie is also really effective. The waxy gray skin, the cracked texture, the missing patches of hair, that’s when it finally starts to feel like a proper mummy.

The kid actors are fantastic, especially both versions of Katie.

The detective subplot feels the most archaeological and Egyptian out of anything in the movie. That’s the storyline where this thing actually feels like it remembers it’s supposed to be The Mummy.

And the movie does manage to make you feel bad for the family, which proves it’s capable of doing something right.

Some the sound affects in this movie is legitimately horrifying, such as chattering teeth, which happens quite a bit in this film, so be warned to anyone who finds that scary.

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❌ Cons

The gore is excessive. Not just “oh that’s gross,” but drawn out, lingering, and uncomfortable in a way that stops being effective and just becomes exhausting. There were multiple points where I had my hood up, half looking away, just not wanting to see what was on screen anymore.

The dialogue is awful in certain moments. Not scary, not clever, just straight up uncomfortable and distracting. There are lines in this movie where you’re not thinking about the scene anymore, you’re thinking “who approved this?”

The movie has an identity crisis. It starts as a Mummy movie, turns into a possession movie, and ends as something completely different. It never commits to one thing.

The rules don’t make sense. The movie sets things up, then breaks them whenever it feels like it. Essentially the rules gets flimsy and tossed around, they dont stick with an established rules.

The ending completely falls apart.

Theres some CGI coyotes and oh boy the CGI looks unfinished, it kinda looks like they were placed in afterwards, yes I know thats how CGI works but go see this movie and you will see what I mean.

And this whole thing keeps bragging about being some original take when most of it feels like it borrowed from other horror movies I’ve already seen a hundred times.

This film is basically a mix of

The omen

Bring her back

The exorcist (its way too much of the exorcist)

Se7en

Poltergeist

Evil Dead

And then a bit of a Mummy movie

This all all way too much!

Do y’all see the issue? Theres barely any mummy in this mummy movie, it just feels like surface level seasoning on top of a pile of different films, look no hate towards Lee Cronin. But plz dude pick one lane and stick with it.

At best ur gonna get some light Egyptian lore, but at worst you end up just getting a generic possession movie and thats the problem, its like this film has a identity crisis.

Also it gets very generic by the end, because once y’all realize what films this movie is taking inspiration from. You will instantly clock in whats gonna happen.

Oh and the grandma is a walking cliche, she’s just here to be the overly religious person in the room, no really thats it. Theres nothing else to her, well that and she becomes the human punching bag. If y’all see this movie, you will know what I mean.

Charlie Cannon to me was the weakest part of the movie, the issue with him is his emotions in this film mainly just consist of looking wide eyed bugged out looking like as if he just saw a bug.

Like it got to a point I was thinking, can you plz show any other emotion thats not that? Especially when we get to the horrific body horror moments!?

This film asks you to stretch your disbelief way to hard, heres 2 examples what im talking about.

1. Katie this girl who’s been in a sarcophagus for 8 years who looks like she has riga mortis, Grey skin thats dried up, maybe slightly malnourished. But for some reason the doctors say shes healthy and ready to go home.

Oh yes that makes sense, yeah sure she only looks like she has riga mortis, looks pale as F**k, looks a bit waxy, isnt responsive, was found in a sarcophagus 8 years later, and her hair looks like its been tugged around with. But sure why not, take her home, all she needs is some soup and love. Yes totally normal, nothing can go wrong.

Jeepers this is kinda why I dont care much for horror movies, because characters seem to have to be dumb for the plot to move forward.

2. The parents (specifically the mother) act extremely stupid throughout this film, like look i get it you havent seen your daughter for 8 years and wanna have them back in your life, but there’s a fine line between wanting to keep her and maybe seeking her some help.

Because this girl throughout this film vomits, eats scorpions in the walls of the house, acts really bizarre, rips skin off, nails fall or get ripped off and headbutts family members. But somehow the mother is like nah shes ok she just needs time, I can fix her. Bruhhhh.

At one point in this movie i thought to myself Fuck it, put her back in the box, it ain’t worth it. And honestly if you have that reaction then you kinda lose connecting to the main characters.

See look i get it she doesnt want to lose her daughter again but if I were a parent snd my kid went missing and I saw them again looking like this id be like, hey doc I do miss my kid but can you maybe idk keep her here until y’all can figure out whats wrong with her? Because this isnt normal, something is clearly not right about her.

Also someone in this movie pulls their teeth out and nobody reacts to it. No one says why did you do that? Nope nothing, its like the film forgets how humans work.

But again I have to remember this is horror movie world, and in horror movie world everyone acts dumb.

Has anyone ever heard of a Split Diopter? If not, well heres a rundown

A split diopter shot is a filmmaking technique where a special lens is used to keep two subjects in focus at the same time, even if one is very close to the camera and the other is far in the background. Normally, cameras can only focus on one depth at a time, so either the foreground or the background would be blurry. A split diopter gets around that by literally splitting the lens, so you end up with both areas sharp at once, usually with a soft or slightly visible line dividing the frame.

Directors use it to show two things happening at once or to create tension, like having a character in the foreground while something important is happening behind them that they don’t notice.

The problem is when it’s overused, it stops feeling like a clever visual choice and starts becoming distracting. In Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, the split diopter is used way too much to the point where it becomes noticeable in almost every other scene. Instead of enhancing tension, it pulls you out of the movie because you keep seeing that artificial split in the image, making it feel more like a gimmick than a purposeful storytelling tool.

Basically this film uses it way too much, to a point it might come off slightly comedic to the type of fans who pay attention to filmography. Just thought I’d make that clear.

There’s a moment where the dad finds this disgusting puss under Katie’s rug and he doesnt do anything, he just lifts up the rug and puts it back down and no the film never goes back to that, again this movie is just finds every possible way to make you regret eating, or better yet existing.

Thr movie is way too long, this movie didn’t need to be 2 hours and 14 min long.

Im getting sick and tired of these demonic possessed movies, the problem is Hollywood seems to can’t expand the concept and make demons scarier outside of a possessed kid cussing and saying mean things, like yeah that was once shocking but after the umpteenth time?

It starts to wear out thin, plz can we do something different with demons? Or better yet can we stop with demon stories period? Especially in a movie titled The Mummy!?

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🧠 Final Thoughts

This movie had a strong opening, good ideas, and solid performances. And it completely fumbled all of it.

This movie isnt even fun, it’s just bleak, gory, mean spirited, gross. Its not fun, its not even a good gory fun time, instead its just uncomfortable. Which is a shamed, I wanted to enjoy this film because I love Egyptian lore, but oh well.

Also last thing, can y’all stop over there at Blumhouse? I mean I get it y’all don’t put a lot of money in your movies, but this needs to stop.

Last year in wolfman you had wolfman running around a farm yard for a whole movie, and now here you have your mummy story taking place in a house in Mexico, like whats next? Gonna make ur Frankenstein story take place in a winnebago?!

No im not giving blumhouse ideas, and if that ever happens then that would be horrible! I would be fed up!

But on top of all that me personally besides Invisible Man 2020, ive not been enjoying these reinterpretations of these iconic horror monsters under blumhouse, and turning them into one giant metaphor for something like trauma and loss.

Come on these monster movies are supposed to be fun, not darkly disturbing to the point you feel a knot in your stomach, now I get it these are horror movies but still the classic monster movies are supposed to be fun.

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⭐ Rating

With everything ive laid out, I cannot in goof spirit give this film any higher then a,

4 / 10

Is this better than the 2017 mummy movie? Yes, but is it better than the boris carloff and brandon frazier mummy movies? Uh no, so this movie sits in this weird, middle ground. Also, if you ask me, this is not really high praises. Of course. Anything is better than tom cruise is running away from sand in london.

But if you want a good mummy movie, I recommend just go and rewatch the Brendan Fraser Mummy Movie, you’ll get more Egyptian lore there then anything your gonna get here.

Or if you want a good Egyptian horror experience? Go play the game Amenti, unfortunately its only avaliable on PC/Steam at the moment.

Ah well, at least in two years, we’re gonna get the fourth installment to the brandon fraser mummy movie, even though this movie was very mediocre, at least the mummy franchise is an I.P is gaining traction again, it does make me happy because I do like egyptian stories.

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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

Alright, now we’re getting into everything.

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💀 Spoilers

The movie opens with the witch lady and her family driving home. She’s already acting off, annoyed at everyone, speaking in Egyptian, clearly not right. They get home, find their bird dead, and she just crushes it in her hand. That’s how we’re starting.

They go into the basement, and this basement is ridiculous. There’s a stone pyramid, a tunnel, and a sarcophagus just sitting down there like this is a normal thing to have in your house. They open it to see if it’s “awake,” the lights go out, they relight them, and the mummy reacts. The husband loses his grip on the mechanism, a hook jams into his mouth, and he’s lifted up and left dangling there.

That whole opening actually works. It’s creepy, it sets the tone, and you’re thinking okay, this might be good.

And then immediately after that we get the title card that says “The Lee Cronin’s Mummy” and I’m sitting there like… did no one spell check this? You just had a strong opening and then hit me with that.

Then we cut to the main family in Cairo. Katie is learning Morse code for Girl Scouts for some reason, the dad is a news reporter, the mom’s a nurse, the brother is messing around, and the family feels normal enough at first. Katie and her brother are fighting over a doll, the dad gets a call about a job in San Francisco, the mom is juggling work and family, and the movie is basically trying to show you normal life before everything goes to hell.

Then the creepy witch lady shows up, lures Katie with chocolate, gives her an apple, does an incantation, and a scarab comes out of the apple and goes into Katie’s mouth. She passes out and gets taken. The dad chases after her, a sandstorm hits out of nowhere, and she’s gone.

We get the police scene where one of the cops thinks the parents killed their own kid, which is ridiculous, and there’s also that really uncomfortable implication where they think maybe she was being groomed because of the chocolates. The movie really wants to dip into every parental nightmare it can think of.

Then we jump forward 8 years.

Now the family is living in Mexico with the grandmother. The son is angsty now, there’s a younger daughter, and the grandmother is super religious.

Then we cut back to Egypt and get that plane crash scene. A guy finds the wreckage, burned bodies everywhere, an eyeball staring back at him, a body impaled through the head on a tree branch. It’s gross, but it’s effective. Then he finds the sarcophagus standing upright in the ground. Later we find out those pilots were Layla Khalil’s brothers, which is actually a decent detail, because apparently they moved the sarcophagus when it was never supposed to be moved.

We cut to it being examined, they open it, unwrap it, and reveal Katie. That’s a great moment. She wakes up, a scarab crawls out of her mouth, chaos, and that’s where the good part of the movie ends.

The family gets called, they go to the hospital, and the doctor says she’s healthy and just needs to go home. Which makes absolutely no sense because she looks like she hasn’t eaten in years, barely responsive, nails grown out, pale as anything, and they’re just like yeah take her home.

So they do.

The grandmother is making cakes for all the birthdays she missed, which is actually sad and sweet, and then they bring Katie into the house in a wheelchair looking like a literal rigor mortis little twelve-year-old girl. They put her in bed and everyone is acting like this is tragic and emotional while I’m sitting there thinking if my kid came back like this I’m not taking them straight home, I’m telling the doctors to keep this kid around until somebody figures out what the hell is wrong with them.

The first night they have her home is when things start getting bad. The little girl is scared, so she sleeps with her brother. The dad goes into Katie’s room in the middle of the night and she’s gone. They hear noises in the walls of the house, go through the crawl spaces, and find Katie hunched over, moving weirdly, and eventually eating a scorpion with the tail hanging out of her mouth. Then they try to restrain her and inject her and she vomits all over the floor while they’re doing it. That’s what I really wanted to see while eating popcorn.

And that wasn’t even the only gross wall scene. There’s the little moment where the little girl goes to Katie’s door, hears her talking, and Katie starts saying she wants to know everything about her. That part was actually creepy. Then it gets weird because Katie says she wants to know what her little piggies taste like, her head hits the floor, and her tongue comes out under the door and licks the little girl’s foot. Ew.

Meanwhile the dad is trying to figure out what happened to his daughter. He sits with her in her room while she’s in bed and she starts clicking her teeth like she’s one of the zombies from World War Z. He realizes she’s doing Morse code. He writes it down, goes to her old Girl Scout stuff, translates it, and the name she’s repeating is Layla.

That part is actually good.

Then he calls the female detective and tells her he has a lead, but he only has the first name Layla. She asks him if he knows any Laylas, if he’s friends with any Laylas, if he got anything from a Layla, and he suddenly remembers something. Then we cut to him in the basement and there’s this coffin full of envelopes in his basement, which made me stop and go okay then. He goes through the mail, finds a creepy old envelope, and it’s from Layla Khalil. That’s how the detective gets the full name.

That’s one of the details the movie actually should be giving us more of because that’s investigation, that’s clue-following, that’s the movie actually acting like a Mummy mystery.

Then we get the morning where the dad drops the little girl off at school and the gate opens and those awful CGI wolves show up. That looked unfinished. It was bizarre and pulled me right out of it.

Back at the house the mom and dad have that argument after she wraps Katie’s leg with gauze. He wants to send her somewhere to get help, the mom wants to keep her home and fix her, and then he says the line about how she didn’t even know Katie was being groomed and she’s the mother. That was low. That was one of the few moments of actual human conflict in the movie and it worked. And then immediately after that he goes into the bathroom and finds the skin hanging from the wheelchair.

This is where the toenail scene comes in and I hated this whole thing. The mom and grandmother are cleaning Katie up in the bathroom. The grandmother is combing her hair and talking, and the mom starts clipping Katie’s toenails. She gets to the big toenail and struggles with it and then suddenly the whole nail rips off and the skin goes with it all the way up to the kneecap. I hated that. I hated thinking about it. I hated watching it. And the movie just keeps going. Katie runs off, the dad finds her in the kitchen stabbing at the exposed leg with a sharp object, and I’m already done.

Then we get one of the best ideas in the movie. The dad takes that ripped-off skin and toenail down to the basement and peels the layers apart. There are markings all over the layers. He takes pictures and brings them to that professor at the college who teaches archaeology and mummies. The movie even lets us sit through his lecture for a second and look at real mummy imagery, which I actually liked. I like seeing actual mummies.

The professor looks at the images and tells him those are not hieroglyphics, they’re heretical incantations. He explains it’s an incantation to hold a demon at bay. That’s good. That’s actually a really good idea. The movie also makes Egyptian drawings in a book look creepy because it keeps zooming in on those blank deadpan faces and with the narration over it, it actually becomes unnerving. That’s a compliment.

Then there’s the tape recorder the professor has that explains the ritual, how this demon is held by mummifying it into a human body to stop it from escaping. Again, that’s the kind of stuff the movie should’ve leaned into.

While all that is happening, the detective is investigating Layla at the farmhouse. She goes down into the basement, finds the giant stone pyramid. Right so my issue with this stone pyramid is its underground and there so happens to be a big open skylight square shapped hole above it, the size of a pool.

And your telling me nobody ever found this giant hole with a pyramid in it? Get the fuck out of here with that. Someone would been curious about this pool sized hole with a stone pyramid under the hole.

She then finds the hidden tunnel, finds the sarcophagus area, and honestly that section should’ve been way bigger because it’s one of the few times the movie feels like real Egyptian horror investigation. Then Layla shows up, the detective pulls a gun, Layla comes at her with a knife, she gets shot, and then somehow does not die later because apparently this movie just says don’t ask questions.

Layla’s daughter shows up digging up a buried box, the detective opens it, and it’s the VHS tape labeled Katie. She takes it back and later interrogates the daughter, who turns out to be Layla Khalil. She tries to speak and reveals her tongue has been cut out because her mother did that when she tried to tell the truth. That’s actually dark and interesting, but the movie doesn’t stay with it long enough.

Then we get the school scene with the little girl. She’s possessed now too, and she’s sitting there with scissors when the teacher comes over and says it’s not art time. The little girl says “you’re not a frog, you’re a c*nt of a toad.” And I’m just like wow, okay, another generic possessed kid vulgarity scene. I am so tired of that trope. That is not scary anymore. That just feels like every generic demon thing ever.

Then the grandmother death scene happens and good grief this movie. She’s in Katie’s room praying, Katie attacks her, closes the door, strangles her with the cross necklace, levitates her, strokes her face, says “don’t worry grandma, it’s fun to be dead,” and then throws her out the window. She lands on the windshield of the car as the dad and kids are pulling up, and then coyotes come out and start eating her intestines. Was that necessary? No. Of course not. But here we are.

Was this completely gratuitous? Yes.

And then the funeral scene somehow gets worse. This movie really has a thing with food and bodily fluids and I hate that about it. The mom is breaking down saying she doesn’t want Katie there anymore, which finally, took you long enough, and meanwhile the little girl is pulling her own teeth out and dropping blood onto the deviled eggs, and somebody unknowingly eats one. Hmmm delicious, must be grandma’s secret recipe. Then the little girl pulls the dentures out of the grandmother’s corpse and puts them in her mouth, walks over to the parents all bloody in the mouth.

Quick, I think that girl might have a mild case of gingivitis. Someone get her some toothpaste and a toothbrush!

Was this supposed to be scary? It was goofy, she just opens her mouth like shes ssying teehee.

And then Katie crawls out of the ceiling like a spider, falls into the coffin, bites into the grandmother’s neck, pus comes out, and she starts licking it like a cat.

Ew.

That whole stretch was where I was like this movie is not just gory, it is gratuitously gory. It doesn’t know when to stop.

It was about at this point, I was thinking this movie is just gratuitously gross for no reason, like was that even necessary?

The family has more chaos at home. The possessed little girl starts asking questions like why are they leaving and why the mom sucks at being a mother. Katie is controlling the brother now too and there’s never a clear explanation for how exactly that control works, it just happens.

Then we get to the third act, which is where the movie basically stops pretending to be anything other than a gross-out endurance test. Katie is tied down in her room, the dad is watching her, she’s banging her head, controlling the brother to bang his head, and then the cop shows up with the answers because she finally watched the tape.

This is where the movie shows the full VHS ritual. It’s horrifying. They show young Katie strapped to a cross, screaming, lowered face-to-face with the mummy while everyone chants in masks, and the mummy vomits black ooze into her mouth. Then they wrap her up in wet gauze and put her in the sarcophagus. That is the most Mummy thing in the movie. That is the most Egyptian ritual thing in the movie. And it’s also one of the most uncomfortable scenes in the entire film. Which is kind of sad, because the most Mummy this movie ever feels is during one of the scenes I least wanted to watch.

Then we get the “Hey brother, do you want to come and undress me” line and the brother says yes and I’m sitting there like uhhhhhhhhh, did no one stop Lee Cronin with this dialogue? That’s disgusting. And then no, it apparently means tearing off her skin, which we then get to watch for what feels like a full minute while the brother helps pull the skin off her like wrappings. I did not like that at all.

Then it keeps going. The mother and detective run upstairs, the possessed son attacks the mother with a baseball bat, Katie bangs the dad’s head over and over, then crawls toward him and says “your daughter is gone, I am her daddy now.” Again, Lee Cronin, I think you’re a little nasty.

So anyways the siblings are grandmother become deadites, I mean mummies. Yeah totally, I meant mummies, silly me for mixing them up.

The detective gets attacked by the deadite—I mean demon—grandmother on the stairs, the grandmother coughs a scorpion into her throat, the tail sticks out through her throat and creates a hole, and she literally reaches in and pulls it out. That made me squirm and want to look away.

Then the room fills with a sandstorm. I will give the movie this, that is one of the most Mummy things in the movie and it is a cool visual. But also why does every mummy movie need a sandstorm? Then immediately after that the dad has that gross hallucination of the dead grandmother vomiting in soup and eating it and telling him to taste it and lifting her skirt saying “I know you want it.” This movie is insane.

Then the detective has to perform the incantation while literally holding her broken throat together with her fingers in the hole. That was another thing that made me look away. The dad chooses to let the demon enter him to save Katie. The demon does that through more mouth-vomiting because apparently that’s this movie’s favorite delivery system. The demon enters him, Katie is somehow free, and now we get the ending that made me so mad.

Katie is alive.

Somehow.

Don’t ask questions, the movie sure doesn’t want to. This is a girl who was in a coffin for eight years, malnourished, possessed by a demon, and by the end her skin has been torn off. And the movie is just like nah she’s a-okay. There are a few little scratches on her face and that’s it. That’s the only damage. Are you kidding me? There is no way anyone survives that and recovers like that.

This ending legitimately pissed me off, i wasnt expecting a full happy ending like this, this just lazy.

Then we get a time skip. The family is back in the basement with hieroglyphics all around the room, the dad is in a coffin down there still possessed but somehow self-aware enough to tap Morse code to Katie saying he loves them. How does that work? I thought the possession completely takes you over. How does this demon work? The movie never really knows. The mom comes down, Katie says she’s doing good, and then we see the three kids playing a board game. The little girl’s teeth are magically back. The movie has no idea how teeth work.

So the movie already had a bad ending.

And then it keeps going.

Yes its still not over, this movie basically has 3 different endings as if this is LOTR. I dont like a lot of modern movies where they have 3 different endings.

We get this final scene that feels like it was reshot at the last minute because it has a completely different vibe. The mom calls the detective asking for a favor. We cut to an insane asylum where the witch lady is somehow still alive even though she got shot and was bleeding out earlier. No biggie apparently. The mom shows up disguised as a nurse and she has a different haircut now, kind of Velma-ish. Then the detective comes in pushing the dad in a wheelchair and here’s another giveaway this was filmed later, the dad suddenly has no beard even though he had a beard the entire movie.

It absolutely screams late reshoot.

And what’s their genius plan? They’re going to have the demon come out of the dad and go into the witch lady so now the dad can be saved too. So let me get this straight. Katie gets to be okay. The dad gets to be okay. The two kids get to be okay. No trauma for you, no trauma for you, no trauma for you, everything is just perfectly fine. Oh what’s that, your grandmother died? Who the heck cares.

That’s where I was done.

Because this movie spends over two hours telling you this is brutal, this is irreversible, this is this awful thing that happened to this family, and then at the end it just says actually no, it’s reversible, everyone gets to live happy ever after, goodbye.

That’s a cop-out.

That is absolutely a cop-out.

The whole thing feels like it is afraid to have any teeth to it. It acts harsher than Evil Dead Rise and then ends more softly than that movie ever would. Evil Dead Rise at least commits. This movie puts you through hell and then refuses to stand by any of it.

That’s why this ending made me so mad.

Because I could maybe understand the demon transfer part if the movie stuck to the logic of it. The problem is not just that. The problem is Katie being alive at all makes no sense, Katie being okay makes no sense, the little girl’s teeth being back makes no sense, the dad still being aware makes no sense, and the witch lady magically surviving long enough for a sequel-bait asylum scene makes no sense.

The movie has cool ideas.

It has actual intriguing Mummy lore.

It has a strong opening.

It has good performances.

It has a creepy design for Katie.

It has an actually good detective subplot.

And it wastes all of that on generic possession stuff, gross-out overload, and an ending that completely backs out of the stakes it spent the whole movie building.

That’s why this movie annoyed me so much.

Because there is a better movie buried inside it.

And this ain’t it.