Film
Lee Cronin's The Mummy
Lee Cronin, the director behind Evil Dead Rise's visceral family horror, reimagines the Mummy mythology as a grim mystery: a journalist's daughter vanishes into the desert as a child and returns eight years later, alive but wrong. This is slow-building, dread-heavy horror more interested in what's inside her than what's chasing her — for people who want patient, sickening family horror over monster-movie spectacle.
If you liked this
Hereditary2018
Ari Aster's family-horror masterpiece builds the same slow, sickening dread — grief curdling into something ancient and inherited — that Cronin is clearly chasing here. Patient, meticulous, and genuinely traumatizing.
But Relentlessly bleak with almost no relief, and the final act tips fully into cosmic horror that some find too far.

Talk to Me2023
This Australian possession horror commits to the same physical, practical-effects dread that made Evil Dead Rise so effective. Fast, nasty, and disturbingly sincere underneath the gore about grief and control.
But Its found-footage-adjacent energy and teen-party setting feel a world away from Cronin's slower, family-scaled tragedy.

Room2015
Brie Larson's Oscar-winning performance anchors this drama about a mother and son adjusting to life after years of captivity — the strangeness of freedom, the family relearning each other. No supernatural element, just devastating truth.
But It's a straight drama, not horror — if you want dread and scares, this offers grief and adjustment instead.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Mummy1932
Same mythology, opposite century of fear: where Cronin's version is grim family-mystery body-horror, Karloff's original plays the mummy's return as tragic, seductive romance. Watched together, they show exactly how differently one curse can be told.
Boris Karloff's original take on this exact curse — a lover reanimated by ancient magic, wrapped in longing rather than gore. It's the ancestor of everything Cronin is rebuilding, and still genuinely eerie.
But A slow, stagey 1930s romance-horror with none of the modern film's visceral dread — patience for early Universal monster movies required.

More like this (8)
Prisoners2013
Denis Villeneuve's grim, meticulous thriller follows two families after their daughters vanish, sharing the same slow-burn dread about what desperation does to people waiting years for an answer. Gyllenhaal and Jackman are excellent.
But It's a police procedural, not horror — tension comes from moral compromise rather than anything supernatural.

Goodnight Mommy2015no page yet
Twin boys grow convinced their bandaged mother isn't really their mother in this cold, clinical Austrian chiller — the same uncanny doubt about a returned loved one, played with unbearable restraint.
But Its glacial pace and clinical detachment won't suit anyone wanting visceral scares over slow psychological unease.
Orphan2009
Deliciously trashy and genuinely unsettling — the id version of 'something's wrong with the child we welcomed home,' a gleeful, over-the-top thriller that commits fully to its twisted premise.
But It's pulpier and campier than Cronin's work, with a melodramatic swerve some find silly rather than scary.

The Others2001
Nicole Kidman anchors this elegant, fog-bound ghost story about a family isolated in a house full of secrets — atmospheric dread built on patience and dawning horror rather than gore.
But It's a slow, old-fashioned gothic mood piece, and the twist may feel familiar if you've seen enough of these.

Sinister2012
Ethan Hawke's true-crime writer moves his family into a house tied to a child's disappearance, and the film builds the same sense of a family unknowingly stepping into something ancient and hungry.
But Leans harder into jump-scare mechanics and an overtly demonic mythology than Cronin's grounded family dread.

The Invitation2016
A dinner party reunion curdles into paranoia when a man's ex-wife returns from a long absence acting subtly wrong — a slow-building study in the horror of not trusting someone you love.
But A smaller, talkier film with almost no gore; its patience will test anyone wanting horror set pieces.

The Missing2014
It takes the exact premise — a vanished child, a broken family, a return that isn't simple — and stretches it into eight hours of slow-burn mystery instead of 133 minutes of dread, proving the setup works as pure human tragedy too.
James Nesbitt plays a father whose son vanished years earlier, and the show spends eight hours in the wreckage that disappearance leaves — the same aching mystery of what happened and who someone becomes after being gone.
But A patient, dialogue-heavy investigation drama with no supernatural element — closer to a procedural than a horror film.

Pan's Labyrinth2006
Same core fear — a child who comes back from contact with something ancient fundamentally changed — but del Toro tells it as gorgeous, brutal fable instead of horror-mystery, proving the idea survives a total genre transplant.
Guillermo del Toro's dark fairy tale follows a girl drawn into an ancient, hungry mythology just as the real world around her turns monstrous — a child touched by something old, told as fable rather than mystery.
But It's in Spanish with subtitles, and its fairy-tale logic and wartime setting are a big tonal swing from Cronin's grounded desert horror.

People
Cast
Jack ReynorCharlie Cannon
Laia CostaLarissa Cannon
May CalamawyDetective Dalia Zaki
Natalie GraceKatie Cannon
Shylo MolinaSebastián Cannon
Billie RoyMaud Cannon
Veronica FalcónCarmen Santiago
Hayat KamilleThe Magician
May ElghetyLayla Khalil
Emily MitchellYoung Katie Cannon
Husam ChadatDetective Ismail
Tim SeyfiDoctor El-Sayed
Directing
- Lee CroninDirector
- Daire GlynnFirst Assistant Director
- Nicola LongSecond Assistant Director
- Charlie EndeanSecond Unit Director
- Mike HayesSecond Unit First Assistant Director
Writing
- Lee CroninWriter
Production
- Ella GaleAssociate Producer
- Sarah Domeier LindoCasting
- Terri TaylorCasting
- BreAnna RomeroCasting Assistant
- Matthew NelsonCasting Associate
- Alayna GlasthalCo-Producer
- Jennifer Scudder TrentCo-Producer
- Niamh GaleCo-Producer
- Alayna GlasthalExecutive In Charge Of Production
- Andrew LaryExecutive Producer
- Anthony TittanegroExecutive Producer
- Judson ScottExecutive Producer
- Lee CroninExecutive Producer
- Macdara KelleherExecutive Producer
- Michael ClearExecutive Producer
- Pete ChiappettaExecutive Producer
- Annie SmithExecutive Producer's Assistant
- Sarah PaekExecutive Producer's Assistant
- James WanProducer
- Jason BlumProducer
- John KevilleProducer
- Jack DonaldsonProducer's Assistant
- Dorothy McDonnellUnit Production Manager