The director of Evil Dead Rise takes on one of horror’s oldest icons and the result is messy, relentless and genuinely difficult to look away from.
- Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opened in UAE cinemas on April 17, 2026 in IMAX
- The film is produced by James Wan and Jason Blum, two of horror’s biggest names
- It stars Jack Reynor and Laia Costa as parents whose returned daughter is not herself
- Critics are divided but audiences craving proper theatrical horror are showing up
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opens not with a tomb, not with an archaeologist stumbling into something they should have left alone, and not with Boris Karloff or Tom Cruise anywhere in the vicinity. It opens in Cairo with a family in a car, a mother who seems off, and a child who is about to disappear into a sandstorm never to be seen again. For eight years. Until she is. And that is where the real horror begins. Released in UAE cinemas today, April 17, and available in IMAX, this is one of the most divisive horror films of 2026. It is also one of the most committed.
Lee Cronin graduates from working within Sam Raimi’s most famous creation in Evil Dead Rise to a bold take on something else, one step closer in his seeming quest to stake a claim as the heir to that celebrated horror maestro. The ambition is visible in every frame. Produced by James Wan through Atomic Monster and Jason Blum through Blumhouse Productions, the film is a reimagining of The Mummy franchise rather than a continuation of any specific version of it, which gives Cronin room to take the mythology somewhere genuinely unexpected. He takes it out of Egypt entirely and into the domestic sphere, which is where horror lands hardest.
Charlie, played by Jack Reynor, works as a journalist while his wife Larissa, played by Laia Costa, works at a local hospital. With them in Cairo are their young son and daughter. One day, the daughter vanishes without a trace during a sandstorm. Eight years later, a phone call changes everything: she has been found and she is alive. The family, now living in New Mexico, should be overjoyed. They are not, for long. What returns to them is something recognisably their daughter and something else entirely, and the film is at its best in those early sequences where the wrongness is felt before it is shown.
Cronin has a fine, lurid sense of humour, and the film frequently trades in the kind of carnage that inspires as much shrieking hilarity as terror in an amped-up crowd. Gradually stripped of their composure and in some cases their skin, the actors all play it with straight-faced commitment, fully aware they are ultimately playing second fiddle to dazzling prosthetic effects and the bilious pall cast by Dave Garbett’s low-lit, mustard-filtered cinematography. That aesthetic choice matters. This is not a bright, clean horror film. It is a sweaty, amber-toned nightmare that feels appropriate for its Egyptian mythology roots even when the action has moved continents.
The mixed critical reception is worth being honest about. Cronin throws a great many balls in the air that he does not always catch, and the film at times feels like a bizarrely mismatched outfit that never quite comes together. The 140-minute runtime is felt in the second act. But eccentricity in horror, particularly when backed by this level of craft and practical effects work, is rarely dull. The film earns its moments and its lead performances hold under considerable pressure.
For Dubai audiences, there is an additional layer of resonance. Egyptian mythology, ancient curses, and the relationship between the desert and the supernatural carry a cultural weight in this region that land differently here than they might elsewhere. Watching a horror film rooted in that world from a city that shares its geography makes for a particular kind of viewing experience. The UAE connection to the story’s origins is not lost on you in the cinema.
It is not a perfect film. It is absolutely a cinema film, built for the big screen, for the shared experience, for the kind of audience that audibly reacts. Go with that expectation and it will deliver!
Director: Lee Cronin
Starring: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Veronica Falcon
Runtime: 2 hours 13 minutes
Rating: R
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
