The teaser trailer for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has officially arrived, and Warner Bros. Pictures has set the film for an April 17 theatrical release. Cronin, coming off Evil Dead Rise, is putting his own dark spin on one of horror’s most enduring myths, and the early footage suggests this is very much not a nostalgia play.
Starring Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, and May Calamawy, the film centers on a journalist whose daughter vanishes into the desert without a trace, only to reappear eight years later. What follows leans less toward swashbuckling adventure and more toward dread, trauma, and the slow-burning horror that Cronin has made his signature. Watch below:
Thanks to a lethal combination of R.L. Stine’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, 1999’s The Mummy, and taking my kids to Chicago’s Field Museum’s Egyptian wing, I am permanently wired to consume every mummy-related piece of media ever produced. I don’t want lore. I need data. Real, fictional, cursed, academic, all of it.
So yes, there is a new Mummy movie, and I am in for three very specific reasons. First, mummy stuff. No explanation needed.
Second, Lee Cronin. The man understands horror in a way that feels rooted in unease rather than excess. Irish horror, in particular, tends to favor atmosphere, folklore, and emotional discomfort over cheap jump scares. It’s the kind of horror made by people who say things like, “I don’t believe in faeries, but I also didn’t cut down that ancient hawthorn tree because why risk it.”
Cronin proved that sensibility with The Hole in the Ground, a deeply unsettling film that trades spectacle for creeping paranoia. He carried that energy into Evil Dead Rise, balancing brutality with control. If The Mummy leans into that same psychological space, we could be looking at a genuinely frightening reinvention rather than another franchise swing.
And third, because mummies. I love mummies.
And if you’re wondering just how far Cronin is pushing things this time around, consider this: producer James Wan reportedly walked out of a recent test screening. Whether it was creative disagreement or simply that Cronin’s take veers too deeply into nightmare fuel is unclear, but when the guy behind Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring needs a breather, it’s fair to assume The Mummy isn’t aiming for family-friendly thrills.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opens in theaters on April 17. And if this doesn’t deliver, we still have Universal’s Mummy reboot with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz coming.
The Geek is a working screenwriter, director and screenwriting instructor.
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