The Mummy: a grotesque reinvention that trades adventure for unsettling horror

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) is less a revival of a beloved franchise and more a deliberate rejection of what the original series stood for. Anyone going in expecting something remotely close to The Mummy (1999) or The Mummy Returns (2001) will likely be caught off guard, because this film abandons the same adventure and mythological spectacle that defined those iconic films.

Instead, Cronin leans fully into a grim, intimate style of horror that feels more aligned with possession and exorcism than anything traditionally associated with mummies. While earlier films thrived on charismatic performances like Rick O’Connell battling resurrected priests and emperors, this version strips away that sense of history and instead replaces it with something deliberately uncomfortable and, at times, outright grotesque.

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The film centers on the Cannon family—Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa), alongside their children, whose lives are defined by the disappearance of their daughter Katie in Cairo.

The story begins with a magician (Hayat Kamille) and her family encountering signs of death in their home, signaling the awakening of an ancient soul. To uphold tradition under the Egyptian demon Nasmaranian, the magician seeks a fresh young body for the soul to inhabit. She discovers the naive Katie and lures her into a trap with the promise of chocolates, after which Katie becomes the next victim of the ritual: a living mummified vessel.

This reframes the “mummy” not as an ancient entity returning from the dead, but as something created through ritual and the corruption of the living. The abduction is deeply unsettling, introducing a disturbing layer of manipulation and foreshadowing a story far more intimate and cruel than the familiar mummy narrative we might expect.

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Years later, the family, now relocated to New Mexico learns that Katie has been found under bizarre circumstances, discovered in a plane crash and preserved inside a sarcophagus, initially suspected to be a victim of human trafficking. This premise alone is compelling, but the film’s execution quickly becomes strange in ways that feel horrifying but unrealistic. Katie’s return should be the emotional and psychological core of the story, yet the reactions from her family are oddly muted.

While there is an initial sense of shock, it never escalates into the level of fear or urgency one would expect given her condition. She is clearly not well—her appearance is demonic and monstrous, her skin is peeling, her movements are erratic, and her behavior is deeply disturbing, yet her parents proceed to bathe her, dress her, and attempt to reintegrate her into the household with a calmness that borders on implausible.

Even as she begins exhibiting violent tendencies, including headbutting her grandmother and spitting in her mother’s face, the family remains strangely composed, as though they are unwilling to acknowledge that something is seriously wrong.

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This disconnect becomes more pronounced as the horror intensifies. Katie is frequently shown moving in unnatural ways, lurking through the house, eating cockroaches, and behaving more like a creature than a child. Yet the family continues to sleep peacefully at night, sit beside her without visible fear, and treat her presence as something manageable. It takes an unusually long time for genuine panic to set in, which ironically builds annoyance for the viewer and as someone easily frightened, I would have left that house in an instant.

As the narrative progresses, the supernatural elements expand in increasingly chaotic ways. Katie begins to exert influence over her siblings, manipulating their actions in disturbing ways: her younger sister removes her own teeth and replaces them with their grandmother’s, while her brother descends into violent self-harm, attempting to attack their mother. These moments are conceptually unsettling and add to the horror.

The toenail scene is perhaps the most striking example: what begins as a mundane act of pedicure care spirals into body horror as Katie’s nails emerge from her mouth, eventually tearing away layers of skin from her legs. It is undeniably memorable, but it also exemplifies the film’s reliance on blood and gore. There are multiple moments like this, where the film seems more interested in pushing boundaries of discomfort.

Photo: The Los Angeles Times

The film also plays on this discomfort with unintentional comedy. The grandmother, Carmen (Veronica Falcón), stands out as a character who seems almost entirely unfazed by the chaos unfolding around her. She continues to mock Katie’s skin and hair, treating her with a casual familiarity that feels disconnected from reality, taken that she looks like a demon.

This leads to her eventual death, falling from a window onto the family’s car, being eaten alive by a pack of coyotes—as the youngest daughter already possessed by Katie bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

When the father eventually discovers a piece of her discarded flesh, complete with markings resembling ancient inscriptions, it feels like a turning point, but even then, his reaction is subdued compared to the severity of what he’s witnessing. To top it all off, one visit with a university professor puts an end to all his unanswered questions and one use of morse code and a hidden letter helps solve the entire puzzle.

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The film also introduces a detective from Cairo who independently pieces together the mystery, traveling across continents and uncovering key information with minimal assistance. Her discovery of a recording showing Katie’s transformation into a mummy through ritual should be a major revelation, yet it is presented in a way that feels oddly detached, especially as the parents watch it with a level of calm that doesn’t match the gravity of the situation.

Despite the excellent gore and cinematography, the writing does no favours for horror enthusiasts. The climax which involves the ritual being reversed in a way that transfers the curse into the father is truly an unrealistic scenario, adding confusion to how the detective was able to memorise the entire ritual by watching the tape two times. The logic of these rules is never fully clarified, and the resolution—shifting the curse back toward the magician feels like an easy ending.

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Ultimately, one of the most common criticisms of the film is that it barely feels like a ‘mummy’ movie. The rich history and mythology of ancient Egypt are largely sidelined, replaced by a framework that resembles an exorcism narrative more than anything else.

That said, the film, while not inspired by the classics, is definitely a grotesque film that some horror fanatics might appreciate. Its willingness to take risks and completely reshape a familiar property is admirable, and there are moments where its unsettling imagery genuinely lands.

Katie, as a character, works on a visual and conceptual level, embodying a form of horror that is both physical and psychological. However, these strengths are often overshadowed by unrealistic storylines and poor writing.

So no, this isn’t the Mummy audiences might have expected. It’s stranger, darker, and far less historical. Whether that makes it compelling or frustrating will depend entirely on what you were looking for.