Evil Dead Director’s Upcoming Haunt Breathes New Life Into Ancient Monster

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 23 seconds ago

For the past few decades, mummies have been featured monsters in movies that are more action-oriented than horror. The last time a mummy was featured as a horror monster in a mainstream film was in 1987’s The Monster Squad. One could be forgiven for thinking of mummies in terms of Brendan Fraser or Tom Cruise, because zombies were introduced, and typical mummies are just zombies wrapped up in bandages … right?

An Ancient Dread For A Modern Audience

In the latest take on the monster, horror master Lee Cronin reminds audiences that mummies have a mystique that is steeped in ancient pagan ritual and occult practices. Millenia before there were zombies, the restless dead were said to have walked the earth, and the only way anyone knew to prevent such affliction was mummification. Early horror iterations called “The Mummy” often asked the question, “what if mummification wasn’t enough to contain the restless dead?” Even the action films tackle this query.

Cronin’s official trailer for The Mummy, which dropped on April 1, 2026, is no joke. It does seem to veer off into a strange direction from normal mummy movies; rather than digging up a 3,000-year-old corpse that then terrorizes the neighborhood, the mummy is a young child who has been missing for almost a decade and is found in a sealed sarcophagus of that ancient age, and it is she who terrorizes the neighborhood. Her distraught parents are both shocked and horrified to find her alive but unaged, and she seems to have returned with a ravenous appetite for fear, if not human flesh.

Cronin Knows How To Make Kids Creepy

Lee Cronin excels at simultaneously creating creepy evil children and making audiences extremely anxious on behalf of the protagonist children who are often their victims. His debut feature, The Hole in the Ground, is an excellent exercise in such dramatic tension, offering a child and a changeling imitating him and spending much of the movie not allowing audiences to know which child was which.

Evil Dead Rise, the first Evil Dead movie that I did not enjoy, still delivered on this theme by taking place among the family of a single mom rather than a group of college students. This is not why I wasn’t fond of the film, but rather that Cronin’s talents lie in his own IPs rather than in contributing to someone else’s. Plus, he’s backed this time by horror studio Blumhouse and their production partner, James Wan’s Atomic Monster.

Natalie Grace And Her Million Dollar Face

The Mummy thus seems to be a return to form for him, even as it borrows from another IP. The Evil Dead franchise has very narrow rules it operates by, while mummies and their cinematic lore have much broader leeway in what can be done with them. There is certainly room for Cronin to explore themes surrounding the horror of being a parent by connecting one of the most terrifying experiences a parent can have, a missing child, to an ancient Egyptian mummy. Coupled with his trademark chiaroscuro lighting in Gothic settings whose antiquity oozes from the very walls, the Irish director seems poised to reinforce his solid reputation in the horror genre.

The Hole in the Ground cast doubt upon whether the boy in it was real or his doppelganger, but The Mummy makes no obfuscation in showing that its creepy little girl, played by the odd-looking Natalie Grace and unnamed on IMDb, is definitely not who she was when she disappeared. The only doubt lies in whether this monster is riding around in their daughter’s actual body, or if it is simply disguising itself as her to prey upon them. Grace’s exotic eye shape lends itself mightily to her makeup and her uncanny and sinister behavior, and her youthful appearance makes her believable as she crawls around in her white nighty exuding evil with unconcealed glee.

Even if Grace’s performance turns out to be poor, her unique facial structure is enough to keep her employed for years, and her apparent emotional range, indicated by “before” scenes of the character with her family, hints that she will be great in this breakout role.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy comes out in theaters on April 17, 2026. Check it out and prepare for a new twist on a very old monster.