I wanted to like Cronin’s Mummy movie. I really did, as I really dug his Evil Dead Rise. What he delivers with this take on The Mummy is disappointing if taken as a Mummy movie. If it had simply been rebranded and made a spin-off within the new Evil Dead franchise, it would have worked.

The Mummy as a Universal Classic Monster has a long tradition in horror films, and this one seems to eschew them all. I’m okay with shaking things up, but this one was so far from anything relating to any aspect of the Monster that it was rather annoying to have the word Mummy in the title.

When Katie Cannon (Emily Mitchell) vanishes from her family’s garden in Cairo, it destroys her father, Charlie (Jack Reynor), pregnant mother, Larissa (Laia Costa), and brother Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams).

Eight years later, they receive word that Katie (Nataile Grace) has been found. She’s scarred, unstable, non-verbal, and as the narrative quickly reveals, no longer the little girl who was stolen. In fact, she may not even be human anymore.

Charlie is a journalist, so he starts digging into the information he’s gleaned over the past years, and it leads to a horrifying conclusion and a loose tie-in with Egyptian mythology, well, at least enough of it to suggest some demonology and what really has control of Katie’s body.

Can she be saved or will the demon tear the entire family apart emotionally and physically?

The make-up effects are solid, leaning into the blood and gore factor that seems to have become Cronin’s bread and butter.

I like a number of the sequences featured in this film, including putting a child in serious jeopardy as is revealed through the narrative, but at no point does a Mummy feature in the story. I don’t need Brendan Fraser coming in, swashbuckling and bantering, though I do adore his Mummy films, but I was hoping that we’d see something akin to one of the Mummy creatures that the Universal films made so iconic.

I wanted more from something called The Mummy. This is just another demonic possession story. Sure there are some wonderfully gory moments, that elicit reactions, but it’s just not a mummy movie. And that lie taints the entire film.

Rename it, rebrand it, make it an Evil Dead film and make me forget the half-assed atttempt to tie it in with Egyptian mythology and go with Deadites.