Is Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Really a Mummy Movie? A.V. Club Critics Debate

Welcome to Crosstalk, where A.V. Club writers dissect pop-culture topics from differing perspectives. This week, Jacob Oller and Monica Castillo examine Lee Cronin’s The Mummy to uncover its true nature.

Jacob Oller: Monica, it’s great to have you with us at The A.V. Club. Though we’re in Chicago and you’re in New York, we still manage to watch new releases simultaneously each week—allowing us to discuss films even without reviewing them. This brings us to Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a title that’s misleading for two key reasons. First, Cronin has only one widely known film to his name. Second—and more importantly—this isn’t truly a mummy movie.

While the film includes grotesque, Sam Raimi-inspired horror elements (from the director of Evil Dead Rise), much of its 133-minute runtime (why is it over two hours?) feels like an extended cut of a Blumhouse possession flick. Did you share this impression? What was your overall take on the film?

Monica Castillo: Always happy to discuss movies with you, Jacob—even the bad ones. And Lee Cronin’s The Mummy was worse than I anticipated. It’s as if they took The Exorcist, stuffed it into a mummy costume, and slapped it onto a different franchise.

Why does the mummy possess a little girl’s body? Why do prayers to a deity from thousands of years later work on this ancient entity? I left the theater with more questions than the film likely deserves.

You’re right about the Sam Raimi nods—including the use of a rosary to mimic the Evil Dead tree scene. But this film felt closer to The Exorcist II: The Heretic in its bloated, cross-cultural storytelling, without any of John Boorman’s visual flair.

Exoticization and Misplaced Focus

Jacob Oller: The most mummy-like aspect of the movie might be its exoticization of Egyptians. So much lore and backstory involving May Calamawy’s Cairo detective and the family ultimately serves to replace an exorcist with a random Egyptian woman who somehow travels across the world in 90 minutes. I was surprised by how Exorcist-like this ended up being, especially after the opening scene suggested we’d spend time in modern Egypt.

You recently rewatched the 1932 Universal classic The Mummy with Boris Karloff—a surprisingly restrained and romantic film that still boasts more striking makeup effects than Cronin’s 2026 release. Karloff’s eyes are iconic, but poor Katie, the girl who becomes partially mummified and haunts her family’s home, devolves into an increasingly unconvincing CGI blob. What did you think of her as a monster?

Monica Castillo: The transformation is baffling. After the promise of a grounded, eerie setup, the film squanders its potential on a messy, effects-driven finale. The lore feels inconsistent, and the pacing drags in ways that make the runtime drag even further.