'Lee Cronin's The Mummy' Should Be Called 'Lee Cronin's The Exorcist'

It’s an odd time to be a Mummy movie that doesn’t star Brendan Fraser. When the next movie in that much-loved ‘90s series was recently announced, it couldn’t help but overshadow the latest Blumhouse-Atomic Monster classic Universal Monster reboot. Even Blumhouse made a joke about any perceived confusion on social media. But Lee Cronin’s The Mummy needn’t worry about being mistaken for Fraser’s series. Instead, its more pressing concern is how much it borrows from other horror movies, especially The Exorcist—a movie that’s already been ripped off hundreds of times. The Mummy’s DNA also includes influences from producer James Wan’s massive output, especially The Conjuring universe, with even a little bit of M3GAN thrown in for good measure. It starts off intriguingly enough. Outside of Cairo, we meet an Egyptian family with a supernatural secret buried beneath their farm. We also meet an American family who’ve relocated so that the dad, Charlie (Midsommar’s Jack Reynor), can further his journalism career. On an otherwise ordinary day, young Katie (Emily Mitchell) vanishes from the backyard; though the audience knows who’s taken her, Charlie and his wife Larissa (The Wheel of Time’s L