Lee Cronin's The Mummy Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Blu-ray Movie Review

We need to talk about Katie.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III July 9, 2026

Lukewarm reboots of classic monster movies are basically a dime a dozen these days, what with Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, Luc Besson's Dracula, Leigh Whanell's Wolf Man, and Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! all appearing within the last year or so to varying degrees of success. (We'll leave Whanell's The Invisible Man out of this, because it's a few years older and actually pretty good.) So now we get The Mummy -- or more specifically, Lee Cronin's The Mummy, no doubt to distinguish it from this reboot franchise and the 2017 Tom Cruise dud -- but the end result is so poorly realized and painfully stupid that now I want to rewatch Evil Dead Rise to make sure I actually kinda liked it.

Playing out like yet another homage to The Exorcist or perhaps even a reskinned sequel pitch for The Conjuring, The Mummy quickly establishes vague rules and incredibly mushy mythology that it soon ignores in favor of non-stop gore and unsettling "gotcha" moments. Our story begins in Egypt just as a woman (Hayat Kamille) and her husband (Omar El-Saeidi) find that an ancient mummified being in their massive cellar -- part of a horrific family history that they've somehow kept hidden from their children, including young Layla (May Elghety) -- has awakened. This mummy is part of a generational ritual where the curse passes between carrier and victim... and the next victim will be little Katie Cannon (Emily Mitchell as a child, Natalie Grace as an adult), the daughter of journalist Charlie (Jack Reynor) and nurse Larissa (Laia Costa) as well as the big sister of Sebastian (Shylo Molina), who are all currently living in Cairo. Lured away from her home by a mysterious woman claiming to be a magician, Katie vanishes without a trace; missing persons detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy) is assigned to help, but the young girl is not seen again for eight years.

In the meantime, the Cannons have moved back to Albuquerque to live with Larissa's mom Carmen (Verónica Falcón) in her labyrinthine house; they also now have another daughter in Maud (Billie Roy), who was born soon after Katie's disappearance. Back in Egypt, detective Dalia has moved on to other things, but the recent discovery of an ancient sarcophagus -- recovered after a nearby plane crash -- brings the unlikely news that Katie is alive but most certainly not well. Somehow allowed to return back home to her family in New Mexico (more on that later), Katie is an empty shell of her former self: she's not just emotionally crippled and barely responsive, but her skin is severely damaged and face grotesquely disfigured as well. Nothing that some chicken soup and bedtime stories won't fix, right?

That's the tip of The Mummy's brainless iceberg, whose first glaring sign of stupidity is when we watch wide-eyed Charlie run through a digitally-added dust storm without blinking once. Somehow, it mostly gets dumber from there. Wheelchair-bound Katie is dragged up the stairs for maximum shock value. The two Cannon kids sleep next door to their scary big sister, who doesn't have a lock on her door. Carmen gets headbutted and bitten by her granddaughter but keeps praying over her anyway. A fatal accident, obviously caused by the Cannons' violent returning houseguest, leads to a funeral that's hosted in the very same house with Katie still upstairs. Meanwhile, Charlie and Larissa wade through lukewarm martial strife over their differing opinions of how to handle the situation, which at no point involves calling the authorities. Finally, Zika comes to Albuquerque like The Exorcist's Father Karras, ready for an inevitable showdown that includes magic spoken words that might just work when Grandma's prayers didn't.

It admittedly doesn't start off terribly by modern horror standards, but The Mummy's second half becomes a true test of viewer patience. Logic is completely thrown out the window in favor of cheap scares and gruesome body horror, and the plot has so many holes that even a blockhead like me didn't need hindsight to see them. It all adds up to a dismal attempt at reviving a franchise that somehow most recently peaked with the 1999 Brendan Fraser movie linked above, and it's easily one of the most unpleasant films that I've had to cover in the last year. It earns a bonus point for Natalie Grace's performance as well as the practical blood and gore effects... but Lee Cronin probably should have insisted that his name be taken off the title instead, because The Mummy isn't really a film to be proud of.

Nonetheless, it made money at the box office (no doubt due to franchise name value, not to mention the involvement of producers James Wan and Jason Blum), and Warner Bros.' support for The Mummy includes separate 4K and Blu-ray editions as well as a Limited Edition Steelbook combo pack. All options feature terrific A/V merits and even a decent collection of extras too... but if we're going by pure movie quality, this ain't exactly the safest blind buy.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As usual, please see my recent review of the UHD edition for a general overview of The Mummy's visual aesthetic, which has been decently downscaled from its native 4K to 1080p/SDR. As expected there are losses in fine detail and color precision, not to mention contrast and shadow depth, yet other areas of this presentation are understandably brighter which increases overall visibility in a handful of scenes with extremely low-light elemts. This isn't too bad of a trade-off, in my opinion, which means that WB's Blu-ray won't be much of a sacrifice for those with small to medium-sized displays. In direct comparison, the 4K disc gets the win in basically every category but, under the circumstances, those "stuck" with Blu-ray shouldn't be disappointed at all -- the only small areas of trouble are very faints signs of macro blocking during visually challenging sequences, but most viewers will not notice them in motion.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Dolby Atmos mix is even better, boasting an extremely wide and immersive presence that, every step of the way, seems tailor-made for home theaters as its most unsettling moments come through rather convincingly. Floorboard creaks, heavy thuds, and knocks from afar are all rendered with extreme precision, enough so that I admittedly looked over my shoulder a few times. LFE is equally heavy, which holds true whether the sounds are natural, supernatural, or just part of the film's original score. Dialogue is mostly anchored up front except for in large groups or where location-based echoes or extremely directionality is present, which only adds to the atmosphere. I certainly didn't think much of the movie as a whole, but it sounds great and serves up all the sonic surprises that horror fans could want.

Optional subtitles, including English (SDH), are included during the main feature and key extras below.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This one-disc release ships in a keepcase with poster-themed cover artwork and a Digital Copy redemption code. Unlike Evil Dead Rises, this one actually gets a decent collection of on-disc bonus features right out of the gate.

• Audio Commentary - This feature-length track with Lee Cronin finds the writer/director in good spirits as he speaks enthusiastically about the production, which he reveals early on was a process that spanned more than two years. It's scene specific and covers the usual grounds including early development. casting, special effects, characters, locations, and more, and it probably won't change your mind about the film if you didn't love it.

• The Making of Lee Cronin's The Mummy (10:57) - Only a few minutes longer than Warner Bros.' usual promotional-style featurettes, this piece nonetheless features a number of obligatory cast and crew interviews spliced with behind-the-scenes footage and supportive clips from the finished film.

• A Bloody and Grotesque Spectacle (7:47) - Many of the same participants return for a quick look at The Mummy's copious amounts of blood and gore, which are at least practical rather than CGI.

• Producing Possession and Ancient Demons (5:41) - Lee Cronin and others talk about the film's scope and broader subject matter, both of which are newer and bigger territory for the writer/director.

• Deleted Scenes (7 clips, 10:03 total) - A collection of unused clips from this already too-long film. One of them even involved Carlie and Larissa tripping on mushrooms while their kids sleep.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Mummy somehow turned a profit at the box office back in April, proving that franchise and producer name value still works. But this is an unusually bad genre exercise where cheap scares and unsettling moments clearly outnumber even basic levels of logic and story depth, both of with are so thin that they're practically transparent. Luckily, Warner Bros.' separate 4K and Blu-ray editions at least offer proportionately great A/V merits and even a decent handful of bonus features, which should certainly please fans, but this is one I definitely can't recommend sight unseen.