The Mummy (2026) Review: Your Evil Dead Spinoff With A Twist

By Lara Kramer  •  04 May 2026 in Movies & TV

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If your personal horror kryptonite is a possessed person staring straight through you while some ancient demonic force uses their body to call you a c*nt, then fair warning: this review may be slightly biased.

Because that trope is my personal weakness, and The Mummy (2026) genuinely had me sleeping with the lights on for a few nights. Without spoilers, here’s why:

This is not your standard “someone in the group touched the cursed object they obviously shouldn’t have” setup. While the film definitely toys with familiar horror conventions, its plot pushes beyond the usual religious imagery and possession formula in ways that make it feel nastier, sadder, and far more psychologically unsettling than expected.

The main reason it works so disturbingly well is simple: the possessed vessel is a little girl.

And that changes everything.

There is something uniquely horrifying about watching this kind of evil unfold through a child, especially when the film roots so much of its terror in parental helplessness.

It’s your absolute worst nightmare as a parent, or honestly just as a functioning human with basic empathy. Yes, this type of storyline has been done before, but The Mummy manages to mess with your head because it is not just grotesque for the sake of being grotesque. It is often devastatingly sad, particularly when viewed through the parents’ perspective.

That emotional grounding is what gives the horror its staying power.

A lot of modern nasty films deliver gore without substance. Here, the body horror is gloriously foul and fully committed, but there is an actual emotional core underneath all the blood, contortion, and deeply upsetting imagery. It is essentially what you would get if an Evil Dead film collided head-on with The Exorcist, then got dropped into suburban domestic horror.

And the body horror?

Absolutely on point.

It is the kind of visceral, skin-crawling practical nastiness that leaves you exiting the cinema with that weird icky feeling lodged in your chest, the kind that makes you suddenly very aware of how dark your bedroom floor looks at night. This is a film that will absolutely have you reconsidering letting your feet hang off the edge of the bed.

The suburban horror setting and mummy angle also give it a distinct pull, though it is worth managing expectations. If you are heading in hoping for a lore-heavy, millennia-spanning archaeological nightmare steeped in authentic mummy mythology, adjust accordingly. The “mummy” aspect is largely frontloaded, peaking when the little girl is discovered inside a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus, before the film pivots hard into possession horror territory.

So no, this is not an ancient Egyptian epic of terror. But to some, it may present itself as something meaner, more intimate, and possibly even more upsetting.

If there is a criticism to be made, it is that the film does lean on classic horror mechanics. Anyone looking for something radically groundbreaking or structurally revolutionary may walk away feeling it borrows heavily from its predecessors. But sometimes execution matters more than innovation.

And this is executed with vicious precision.

Cronin doesn’t exactly redefine the genre here, but what he does have is an impressively tight grip on mood and escalation, and more importantly, the confidence to let the unease sit there and rot on screen. The film leans into its own grotesque nature without flinching, holding shots just long enough that you start to feel physically uncomfortable.

When was the last time a mainstream horror release had this much emotional weight while also being this unapologetically disgusting?

All in all, The Mummy is one for fans of visceral horror, body horror, and stories that understand terror hits harder when it is emotionally anchored.

Just be ready for confused Tom Cruise fans when you say the film scared you.

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