Blumhouse’s R-Rated The Mummy Remake Suffers The One Problem We All Saw Coming

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Although Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a decent horror film, the new Blumhouse reboot has a significant problem that many viewers anticipated from the first trailer. The Mummy movies, more than most horror series, have evolved dramatically over time. Considering the series began in 1932, it’s not surprising that its style, tone, and story have changed so much over nearly a century of filmmaking.

Despite their differences, the various Mummy films – from the 1932 original to the 1959 version, the 1999 film and its sequels, and even the 2017 reboot – share common ground. They all combine exciting action and adventure with classic fantasy horror, generally involving archaeologists who accidentally awaken an ancient Egyptian mummy and face the consequences. These movies consistently feature adventurous settings, elements of traditional adventure stories, and moments of humor, blending action tropes with their horror themes.

Blumhouse’s new, R-rated take on The Mummy is very different. It’s a straight-up horror film, aiming for scares without holding back. While it has a few dark, funny moments, don’t expect a traditional adventure with heroes, lighthearted jokes, or exciting action sequences. Like director Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise, this Mummy is a relentlessly brutal horror experience – and, surprisingly, it doesn’t focus much on the mummy aspects of the story.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Is Really An Exorcism Movie In Disguise

The movie Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opens with a chilling scene, then quickly focuses on Charlie and Larissa, a couple whose young daughter, Katie, was kidnapped. Eight years later, Katie unexpectedly reappears – found alive, but deeply troubled – inside a sarcophagus on an airplane. When the plane crashes, leaving no other survivors, Charlie and Larissa take Katie home, hoping to help her adjust to life after so long missing.

It quickly becomes clear that something is terribly wrong with Katie, the couple’s daughter. Whatever is now inhabiting her body isn’t the sweet little girl they once knew. Although the movie takes its time revealing what happened to Katie, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy keeps you engaged with its gore, twists, and scares – it can even be disturbing at times. However, despite all the horror, it doesn’t really feel like a traditional mummy movie.

The new Mummy movie throws away everything that makes a mummy scary and disregards the core concept of the original films. While previous Mummy movies put their own spin on the idea, this reboot changes things so much it’s hardly recognizable. Instead of a centuries-old creature, the ‘Mummy’ is a child possessed by supernatural forces, making the film feel more like an exorcism story than a traditional mummy adventure.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Doesn’t Do The Title Character Justice

Okay, let’s talk exorcism movies. Honestly, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a breath of fresh air. We’ve had some real misses lately – 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer was a total letdown, and both The Ritual and The Pope’s Exorcist wasted interesting concepts on just being star vehicles. But The Mummy? It actually delivers genuine scares and is legitimately unsettling, putting it right up there with the indie hit Bring Her Back from 2025. And frankly, it deserves a lot of credit for that.

The new Mummy film feels very similar to director Lee Cronin’s previous horror hits, Evil Dead Rise and The Hole in the Ground, and doesn’t fully embrace what made the original Mummy movies special. Like Evil Dead Rise, it transforms an innocent main character into a frightening monster who terrorizes her family. And, similar to his 2019 film The Hole in the Ground, this Mummy features a child who becomes a dangerous, supernatural threat to a parent.

Katie is definitely unsettling, and she’d fit right into films like Bring Her Back, The Exorcist: Believer, or even Lee Cronin’s own Evil Dead Rise. The biggest issue with Cronin’s The Mummy is the lack of a classic, traditional mummy figure like Imhotep or Kharis. This makes it feel like the director had a great idea for a scary and original horror film, but its connection to Egyptian mythology, sarcophagi, archaeology, and other typical mummy movie elements feels secondary.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Is Still A Solid R-Rated Horror Movie

While Blumhouse’s upcoming Wolf Man reboot is on the horizon, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is actually a pretty good horror film. It’s exciting, full of surprises, and arguably the most disturbing wide-release horror movie since the intensely graphic Terrifier 3 in 2024. However, the reboot feels like a missed chance – The Mummy could have been a much darker and more violent take on the classic story, fully embracing its potential for gore and horror.

A hard-R rated Mummy film, set in the desert with archaeologists unearthing a cursed tomb, might seem like a predictable idea. However, before writing it off, it’s worth remembering how effectively John Carpenter updated The Thing from Another World in 1982. He largely kept the original story, setting, and characters intact while creating one of the greatest horror remakes of all time.

Carpenter skillfully used newly relaxed censorship rules and better special effects to transform a low-budget, fairly tame sci-fi horror film into a classic – a truly brutal, clever, and disturbing horror movie. Director Lee Cronin had previously demonstrated a talent for making returning characters genuinely unsettling. His film, The Mummy, had the potential to reimagine a somewhat outdated and cheesy premise into something truly frightening, which makes it frustrating that the movie doesn’t build on what came before.

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2026-04-20 19:08