“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is supposed to be one thing at the beginning but then turns out to be some other thing in the end, and I enjoyed that to some degree. While it does not bring anything particularly new to its real genre territory, there are several competent moments for dread and shock at least, and you may overlook its rather thin narrative and shallow characterization.

After the opening scene which becomes more disturbing than expected, the movie introduces us to an American TV journalist named Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) and his family. Mainly due to his work, he and his family have stayed in Cairo, Egypt during next several months, and things have been fairly good for them, but then there comes an unexpected incident. Their 8-year-old daughter Katie, played by Emily Mitchell, is suddenly vanished for no apparent reason, and Charlie and his wife Larissa (Laia Costa) are quite frustrated and devastated as the following investigation by the local police is going nowhere.

8 years later, Charlie and Larissa are now living in Albuquerque, New Mexico with their two other children in the house belonging to Larissa’s mother. Although they remain haunted by Katie’s disappearance as reflected by a room still ready for her possible return, the family looks fairly fine on the whole, and it seems they can move onto the next chapter of their life at last.

Of course, there soon comes an unexpected news for them. An old mysterious sarcophagus was recently found from an airplane crash site in Egypt, and, what do you know, it contains the barely living body of Katie, who is now 16 years old and played by Natalie Grace from this point. Quite baffled to see their daughter again, Charlie and Larissa eventually take their regained daughter to their home in Albuquerque, and their two other children certainly feel awkward about this sudden change in their daily life.

As Larissa tries to help Katie’s recovery along with her mother, we surely begin to get a series of bad signs popping here and there. While looking mostly catatonic on the surface, Katie frequently shows erratic behaviors to the confusion of her parents, and their two other kids find themselves more disturbed by the increasingly ominous presence of their older sister. As things gets worse in their household day by day, Charlie tries to find any clue to what really happened to Katie at that time, and Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy), a young local female cop who handled Katie’s case, is willing to help him as much as possible.

Even before they come closer to discovering the unspeakable secret behind Katie’s disappearance, you will get a pretty good idea of what is really happening to Charlie and his family – especially if you are a seasoned moviegoer like me. After all, Katie’s appearance looks as dirty and ragged as that young unfortunate girl in “The Exorcist” (1973), and she is surely capable of doing several nasty things such as suddenly vomiting a lot of gooey stuff on the floor.

It can be rather frustrating for some of you to see how the main characters in the film often behave as if they had never watched “The Exorcist” or any other similar horror films out there. Rather than following common sense, Charlie and Larissa keep doing one unwise thing after another along the story, and we are accordingly served with the ghastly consequences from these foolish actions of theirs. Even after a certain main character dies in a very gruesome way later in the story, they still try to maintain their status quo in the house, and that logically leads to more moments of terror and disgust for us.

These and many other horrific moments in the film are handled fairly well by director/writer Lee Cronin, who previously gave us “The Hole in the Ground” (2019) and “Evil Dead Rise” (2023). As the movie surely pulls all the stops during its expected climax, we are naturally bombarded with a lot of bangs and crashes, but this is imbued with some sense of dark fun even though it is clearly influenced more by “The Exorcist” and “The Evil Dead” (1981) than those numerous mummy movies such as that dull 2017 film starring Tom Cruise.

It is a shame that Cronin’s screenplay does not provide much depth to its main characters, who are more or less than plot elements to be manipulated along the story. While Jack Reynor, who is no stranger to horror films considering his effective supporting turn in “Midsommar” (2019), is merely required to look baffled or unnerved without anything else to do, Laia Costa and May Calamawy are often stuck in their bland parts, and the same thing can be said about the young performers playing Charlie and Larissa’s children. Shylo Molina, Dean Allen Williams, Billie Roy, Emily Mitchell manage to leave some impression despite their thankless supporting roles, and Natalie Grace looks admirably committed during several intense scenes assigned to her.

In conclusion, “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is thankfully less terrible than I worried, but it is still not good enough for recommendation due to several reasons including its deficient storytelling. Although it is relatively more enjoyable than that Tom Cruise mummy flick, the movie does not distinguish itself much in that familiar genre region belonging to “The Exorcist” and other countless movies about demonic possession, and my mind is already ready to move on from this passable experience.