442: Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

This week we're joined by Cristina Giraldo to unwrap Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026). We unpack Cronin's grief-soaked reinvention, dissect the film's oppressive body horror, and debate whether its ending lands with satisfying force. In this episode's b-side, we plan our respective wakes, and conjure a new recipe for Sean's Kitchen. This episode contains spoilers, beginning at 41:18.

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Mentioned in the Episode

Watch the Movie

Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

Related Episodes

What happened to The Mummy? | 1932 - 2017

251: The Mummy (1932)

268: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Main Episode

How Director Lee Cronin and Producer James Wan Update a Classic Monster in 'Lee Cronin's The Mummy'

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Music Credits

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:04

So much wiggle, so much jiggle, I was gonna have a heart attack.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Three years ago, Sam Raimi handed Leaf Crown in the Rains to one of Horror's most sacred franchises. And when he helmed Evil Dead Rise, he gave the world a film that took the Evil Dead mythology and rebuilt it around a mother and her children in an apartment building. When James Warren called in shortly after with a pitch for a different film, Cronin's first reaction was uncertainty. It wasn't screaming at him the way Evil Dead had. But the unfamiliarity became the hook, and he turned down an opportunity to do a sequel so he could focus on bringing this week's film to life. Now what followed was DC's personality. Cronin's mother actually passed away the same day he grabbed Evil Dead Rides. His grief found its way into the script for his new film and in ways that are visible on screen if you know how to look for them. The result is a Warner Brothers and Bloodhouse production. No connection to universal lineage, no shared universe, no franchise obligations. Just a horror film about a journalist whose young daughter vanishes without a trace, and the family left to survive the eight years that follow. And when she's ultimately returned to them, what should be the end of their nightmare turns out to be the beginning of an even worse one. This week we're talking about Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

A total joke, a waste of time, or a slash. Totally killer, pun intended.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

My name is Chris. I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the classic horror connoisseur Sean.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I want to learn all about you, like how your little piggies taste.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

And our special guest, actor, creator, and aspiring Scream Queen, Christina Hidaldo. Don't worry, Grandma. It's fun to be dead.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

You're tuning into Lee Cronin's The Mummy right here, right now. But if you support the show, you'll also get to hear our B-side at the end of this episode, where we get into some pretty interesting things like planning our respective wakes.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Christina actually joined us for a bonus episode where we explored the entirety of the mummy as a property and as a franchise. And we got to share our expectations for what we wanted to see from Lee Cronin's film. Before we unpack this movie, we'd love to help you learn a little bit more about Christina. Christina, welcome. Happy to have you. Stoked to be doing this again with you. Tell us about your relationship with the horror genre.

SPEAKER_04 2:43

I uh am very excited to be here. I love, love horror. I don't think I'd be here if I didn't. I started watching horror movies with my dad when I was, I don't even know what year The Ring came out, but The Ring was the first movie that I watched, and it truly traumatized me and also excited me. So the horror obsession never stopped. I am also an actor, and my dream, like ultimate goal is to be a Scream Queen. I think that is like the genre I would love to be in mostly. So like a Mia Goth, basically a version of Mia Goth. But yeah, I love horror. I will go every week to watch any horror movie that's out by myself with friends, whomever, but love to consume horror as much as I can.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Absolutely incredible. And you know what? Listen, that's a strong pipeline, right? From the ring to Mia Goth. And Mia Goth, I mean, that could be Mia Goth in Infinity Pool, that could be Mia Goth in Pearl, that can be in X, Maxine, and a number of other horror movies she's done. So it does beg the question, Christina, which flavor of horror is your personal favorite?

SPEAKER_04 3:48

It's hard to say. I I will say John Carpenter's Halloween is my comfort movie. I will fall asleep to it. I love a good slasher, but I kind of'm into everything. I I think if I had to pick one, it would probably be slasher, like old school classic slasher.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

They're just so fun, you know?

SPEAKER_04 4:06

They are, they are, they're really fun. We just get some fun, fun old kills, fun characters. I love a can't be 80s slasher. I'll take it all.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Okay. So what you don't know, listener, is that as you're looking at this call, Christina is Christina, and I'm Chris, but she's also Chris, and she's Chris with a C and I'm Chris with a K. And now for this to be two Chris's who also like slashers, I mean, hey, you might actually be the perfect overlap between Paris and I. Paris is a screaming queen and myself as a slasher enthusiast. I am the perfect mix of both. Yeah, if Paris and I had a baby, you'd be the baby, I think. I am the horror baby. Yes, there it is. There it is. Now, you gave an example of a couple movies there, and we know that Halloween is your comfort movie, but what would you say is your ultimate slash?

SPEAKER_04 4:56

It's so hard to pick. It really is truly so hard to pick because I'm gonna go out on a limb. I've seen a lot, a lot, a lot of horror movies. Right now, I'm just gonna pick my current ultimate slash for the time being because I can't put a blanket statement on my entire life. Safe space.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

We're not gonna hold you to it. You're free to change. You can be a different person tomorrow.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

Yeah. I will say Maxine, just because one, me a goth, duh. And two, I'm really into the 80s. I love, love that movie. I think that like the style, the vibe, the acting, I just everything is so good about it. So right now I'm having a lot of fun re-watching Maxine.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

I love that. That's awesome. You know what's harder than the question of what your ultimate slash is for horror? Because like I feel like, you know, when you say that you love horror, you get this question a lot. What's your favorite horror movie? You kind of develop like what you really enjoy. Somebody asked me the other day, do you watch anything other than horror movies? And I'm like, Yeah, I watch tons of movies. And they're like, Okay, so what's your favorite non-horror movie? And I was like, I got nothing. I don't even know what to say right now.

SPEAKER_04 6:01

You're gonna die when I tell you mine. Mine are so it the the the two people in my head, they're really scary opposites. It's like 80s rom-com, like Can't Buy Me Love with Patrick Dempsey. I'm very into. I love like a cheesy 80s rom-com.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Okay, wait. So are you familiar? I mean, I I know that you listened to the podcast before you came on as a guest. Are you familiar with the hard eyes episode that we did? Yes, yeah. Okay, so did you follow up and see the rom com to horror pipeline or the horror to rom com pipeline actually? No. Wait, tell me more. Oh my gosh. Okay, we're gonna send you for follow-up a link to a blog post. And for our listener, I'll put it in the show notes for this episode. There is a very strong pipeline of actors who got their start in horror movies and then converted over to rom-coms. Or maybe it was the maybe it was vice versa. Maybe they were in rom-coms and they moved over to horror movies, but the overlap is there, it's real, it's alive.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

So many well, Patrick, Patrick Dempsey.

SPEAKER_04 7:07

Hello, thanks. Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Patrick Dempsey, 100%. There's also Tom Hanks. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

A lot of people like started in horror.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Mm-hmm. That's crazy. I didn't think about it. Yeah. The overlap is absolutely insane, and I cannot wait to dig more into your own flavorings and your taste for horror. I have a feeling there's going to be some more rom-com bits to come. But let's actually start diving in to this episode, to this movie. It does beg the question if you haven't listened to our bonus episode yet. I encourage you to. We talked about The Mummy from 1999, which is probably the closest we'll get to reviewing that movie on this podcast. This is more action adventure. But what were you all expecting going into this week?

SPEAKER_00 7:51

You already know my take on going into any of these. You can call it like it's not part of the franchise and all that. And I think that's something that's important to remember as we kind of break into this episode. But I was definitely just as soon as it was announced a little weary going into it. I wasn't quite sure how it was gonna go. I think, you know, we've been trying to do these things with different classic monster movies over the last however many years, and I think it's been pretty hit or miss. And so I don't know. I was just kind of weary going into it, but on the other hand, super hopeful, right? Because we know that we have Lee Cronin at the helm, and I enjoyed what he did with Evil Dead Rise. And based on that work alone and the bits that we got from the trailer, I think it's fair to say that we probably could be expecting something very different and much darker than we're used to. And so weary but hopeful.

SPEAKER_04 8:41

Yeah, I think the Evil Dead Rise was definitely a big source of excitement for me. I really loved Lee Cronin's style in that movie. I felt like it was a little almost like comic book-y, like very dark. Um, I loved how the, and we'll get more into it when we talk about like the stylistic choices made in this film, but like how characters were framed and like how half of their faces were cut off. I was just excited to kind of see that style because it was so, it was so specific in Evil Dead Rise that I was excited to see it applied to a character like the mummy. But I wasn't, I think I really detached, knowing that the Brendan Fraser movie is coming up, I really detached the two of them and I separated them. So I don't think I had an expectation for that at all. I was like, I know that this is gonna be completely different. It's not gonna be in the same universe, or even trying to accomplish the same thing. But I definitely was excited for like a much darker take on the mummy and and really diving into like the classic horror, scary monster of it all. So yeah, I was pretty excited. I was curious though, because titling something after your own name is holds a lot of weight. Like we have John Carpenter's the thing, but at that point he had already made five films. So I was really curious like how much we could expect from this movie. I I was also expecting it to be very like stylistically him since his name was in the title.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

That's such a great call. And for some, and I remember when you pointed this out before this episode, I was like, Yeah, that is a little ballsy, right? It's a little ambitious. It's like really trying to make yourself go by a moniker versus ever being known and building credibility by your own identity and just becoming like the nickname. Like you can't be just the monosyllabic star immediately. But going into this, especially given the the storied uh nature of this franchise, oh yeah, I want to see the mummy. Which one? Oh, you know, that one, like the new one. Oh, the 2017 one, the Tom Cruise one. No, Lee Cron's the mummy. Like, like for me, the math went in that order because it feels like okay, it's less about him trying to say, like, this is my mummy, and it felt more like, listen, for everyone's sake, we need to make sure no one's expecting Brendan Fraser. It's gonna be like the Jack Frost of it all, right? 1997. Are you getting Killer Snowman or you get Michael Keaton? Which way are we going?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Could be fun either way, you never know.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Scary either way, to be honest. Pretty funny. Absolutely, absolutely. But and I really want to start here, right? And really dwell in that because you hear the title, The Mummy, and the thing that your brain is gonna do is go straight to Brennan Frazier sliding under a closing door in Rachel Weiss being Rachel Vice. And this film is not interested in any of that, it is a completely standalone property. One more time for the people in the back, it's a completely standalone property. It shares a title and a concept of a monster and nothing else. And the sooner you make peace with that going in, the better the movie gets, right? What I also think is worth saying, and this is coming fresh off of that retrospective episode that we did, but it also matters that this is also completely different from the 2017 approach with Tom Cruise's version. That film and and I'm not even just talking about the story. Let's leave the story alone, let's leave the the setting of it alone. That movie's approach was to launch a franchise, and it became a cautionary tale almost immediately. So Cronin took a look at that and apparently decided the only move that you have left to go is in the complete opposite direction, no universe building, no spectacle, no winking at the audience. It's just, hey, we're gonna make a fucking horror movie that happens to have a mummy in it. And listen, I think the instinct was the right one.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

For sure. I think the choice, as we're saying it, to put Lee Cronin on the title is specifically to tell you that it is not the mummy that you're used to. It is going to be a different mummy, and I think that's definitely what we got. We got a much different take, a much darker take on a mummy film that anyone is probably used to. And whether you like the classic Universal Monster films, the action adventure films of the 90s and early 2000s, this one is this one just hits different. And I think this definitely feels different than any other mummy film that we've gotten so far. This one was, as expected, so much darker than what we've gotten in the past. But I think the strongest feeling you get in this movie is this underlying tension that builds as the movie goes on. It's this mixture of unsettling unease, and I don't know, it just kind of like slow builds until it really picks up.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Oof, yeah, man. As you're saying that, here's where my brain immediately went, Sean. Do you remember when the mummy was a swashbuckling adventure? Pepper J Fom remembers. That's what I thought. And then this ain't your grandpappy's mummy. It's a completely different bit. And I think it's because this movie, more so than any other mummy movie I've seen, earns its horror the hard way. It doesn't lean on jump scares necessarily. Some of it is just like it's gonna linger in it. It builds a family that feels genuinely real in the first 10 minutes, and then it systematically destroys them. And it is the promise of pain in a way, and I know it sounds a little crazy because in Evil Dead Rise, oh my god, we saw a family get eviscerated, but it makes you feel every step of that destruction, and the emotional gut punch comes so much earlier because it doesn't really let up. There's like this specific kind of grief running through this film, and that's less of scary things are happening, like Evil Dead Rise with a cheese grater. Instead, this feels like the pain of watching a family trying to love someone back from something that can't be loved away, and that hurts. So not only is this fucked up to look at, it's just kind of sad too. It's like this harder thing to sit with and just boo is a monster jumping out of a closet.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Yeah, I feel like eviscerating a family unit is like a Lee Cronin special at this point. I am just gonna go in expecting heartbreak every single time. I'm like, I didn't think I would cry, but you got me, Lee.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, boy, you got me. Okay, this is exactly what Nicole Kidman was talking about in the AMC salute tribute. Heartbreak feels good in a place like this because bitch, my heart was broken. It was broken. It also begs the question. Now I understand what was on this man's mind and heart going into this movie because we have his mother passing when Evil Dead Rise raps. Also, we had undertone earlier this year. This man is grieving his parents where he cared for them at the end of their life in his childhood home. Directors are really on one, bringing us into their grief. What a fucking wild ride we're in in cinema.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

It's just special. I don't say that like it's lighthearted, but it's kind of special what you can do with, and maybe you could do this with other films, but with horror films, you can really put your emotions on your sleeve. And this kind of thing makes a special film and it makes it feel different. And yeah, this one, to your point, is just it's that unease rather than outright fear. I think Cronin he leans so heavily into this discomfort, this space of discomfort. There's just this grime to everything in the movie and this sense that something is wrong long before anything explodes into any kind of violence. You're just sitting there simmering and waiting, and you know something's wrong the entire time.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

Yeah, and I think that's something that horror, if you're not an avid horror fan, might be surprising to you in general, is the ability to be able to good directors create good directors and good writers create these characters that you really feel for and fear for. And I think that's what makes an effective horror movie is like someone that you care whether they live or die, you care about the stakes of their life. And I think Lee Cronin, with this movie and his previous movies, has done a really good job of creating characters that we care about ultimately.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

We love when they make us give a damn. And listen, they made me care a little bit too much because there are some things that happen in this movie that look gross, that even sound gross. And it's such a horrific package, right? This movie is built on dread that is just sustained all the way through. It gets under your skin even while it's peeling off its own skin. And that body horror, which I'm sure we'll go into later with the sleigh by sleigh and thinking about the gore score. This was effective. I got flesh removal in this movie that I expected to see in Evil Dead rise. And the sound design for that flesh, just so much.

SPEAKER_04 18:01

I also will say, going into this movie, I did not look at the ticket I purchased. I booked a prime at AMC. So my seat started jumping around and wiggling in the movie, and I was not mentally prepared for that. Almost had a heart attack. I was like, is my seat possessed? I was also by myself. I went to the movie by myself in a jiggling seat, and it was truly traumatizing. Definitely, definitely added to the fear.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Incredible. Your prime is better than my prime because I went to a prime showing and it was just like the standard recliners, but nothing was jiggling, nothing was wiggling.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Oh no, so much wiggle, so much jiggle. I was gonna have a heart attack. Um, it was really, really scary. But I think that it was paired with the sound design, which to your point was so incredible and so effective at making the gory moments and the scary moments feel that much more intense. And I definitely found myself feeling very uncomfortable watching this movie. I am a big gore fan. I like love all the Saw movies, some more than others. I love Hostel. I'm very into body horror, but this was, I was like actively turning away from the screen and having to like close my eyes during certain parts.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Amazing. I would love to try one of these prime seats and just see what it's all about. I'm just thinking, like, I'm just thinking of the worst possible movies where you could just experience in those seats just sounds like a good time. Maybe not even horror. It could just be like one of those end-of-the-world movies where everything's just exploding around you.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Okay, so when Twister came out earlier this year, I didn't get to experience it, but Regal has 4DX and those seats like move around and stuff like that. And I've heard that Twister in 4DX was a sight to behold.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Yeah, I wish I would have seen that too.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

It's just got big fans blowing on you the whole time.

SPEAKER_04 19:56

And water, it's like a Disneyland ride. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Wild, absolutely wild. Yeah, I mean, listen, the sound design is definitely one of a few things where I feel like this movie really shined. And I think that, you know, aside from the sound design and how well that was, and we'll probably break into that even more as the episode goes on, but the atmosphere is also really, really good in this movie. The atmosphere is consistently oppressive throughout the movie. It feels dusty, it feels ancient, it feels cursed in a way that kind of fits the mythology. Even when you're not in, you know, Egypt, even when you're not in that space and you're back at this family's house, not nowhere near Egypt, like it still kind of fits the vibe. And there's just something, I don't know, there's genuine horror imagery that really sticks with you as well. So when you just look at everything and visually what this movie does, I think it does a really good job setting the stage.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

That's such a great call out, Sean. There's so much that this movie has going for it. The filmmaking, like the art of it, the technique of it. It is it's confident, it's detailed, and what I think that supports is not only a movie that looks incredible, that sounds incredible, that is really gross, but the family unit as a whole feels very believable to me. Everything feels intentional and even at its grossest moments, even at like and we get some weird shit in this movie. I want to be so clear. I feel like I was watching an Evil Dead movie at some point, not because of the Evil Dead Rise parallels, but because of the direction that things go. I'm like, who is thinking of this shit? I've never once thought about some of the fluids that are happening in this movie, and yet here it is burned into my brain.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

But even with that, it doesn't feel gratuitous for its own sake. It's uh such a hard balance to strike. Let's be balls to the wall, weird and gross, but also let's be intentional and thoughtful. But this movie commits to body horror in a way that feels very effective. And the marriage between those two ideas is strong. But the only thing for me, and listen, this is a a maybe the nittest of picks, right? It runs a little long, but it's a lot, it's a lengthy boy.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

It's a little bit draggy in some parts. I feel like we could have gotten a slightly tighter cut that would have served the momentum of the movie better. It's it's not something that's gonna break the experience, but I did find myself thinking, like, okay, well, how much time is left to resolve all this?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

It's a good call out for sure. I literally put the same note down and I was like, is this a pacing issue or is it just the length of the film? It's a little bit long, I'm engaged, but it feels like in the middle somewhere we're kind of spinning the wheels a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 22:50

Yeah, I think the pacing issue is really interesting because there was a point where we get a character back that I'm like, this feels very fast to me at least. And then we get towards the end and I'm like, okay, are we done with the movie yet? Or is it not? And I I'm very into a long runtime. I think with the right movies, I'm like, give me two hours, give me two and a half hours. But I think that there was a little bit of, I don't know if you would call it a pacing issue, but for me, it felt like it lagged at some points and then felt like we glossed over other points that felt we should kind of like give more attention to.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, I think it's I think that's one of the things that I feel like works against the movie, just a tad, but nothing crazy. I think we're just really trying to, you know, point out every possible angle here. But I also think that there were moments, and depending on what you know, what you like and what you don't like, or what makes you feel defines a good movie and doesn't, I think there are also a lot of moments in this movie that feel like you've seen in other movies. And it's not just the Evil Dead Rise bits. There were some things that worked really well. There's some things that you know are just kind of very familiar formulas that you've seen over and over again. The surprising sprinkle of camp that felt like the strange mix of like not even just Evil Dead Rise, but OG Evil Dead meets some kind of Egyptian exorcist, like those vibes for sure, you can get into. But then there's also a lot of things that happen throughout the movie that feel like that were kind of just reusing a lot of things, wearing the influence on your sleeve, I guess is the best way to put that. Like you're really using your influence heavily throughout this movie.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Can I just say, and I think I shared this with you in a text, Sean, as I was watching this movie, I thought, oh yeah, it's giving Evil Dead rise for sure. But then I remembered as we get especially into the third act of the movie, oh that's right, James Wan was involved to an extent because at some point it kind of just feels like we're in the conjuring universe.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

It is, and I don't mean this to sound like a diss because I I will get into my full thoughts about the movie, but it is derivative. Like you can see the influence on from so many movies like The Exorcist, Evil Dead Rise, all of these things. But I think that the parallels to Evil Dead Rise don't bother me so much because I think it made for really strong stylistic choices. It made for like a stamp of Lee Cronin's name on the film. And I really personally love that. I love when I can watch a movie and pick out who the director is immediately just from the cinematography, the look, the feel. Um the tight shots, oh God, it was one of my favorite aside, I would say aside from the sound design, which I know we talked about, the tight shots of the film where you get something in the foreground, but you kind of get it, you get like half a face or like a foot or something. And then in the background, you get something else that you're supposed to be focused on as well. I love those shots. They almost reminded me of there were a couple of shots in us that felt very similar. And I loved that. I feel like it definitely added to the tension and the fear factor for me.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

I love what you talk about in terms of like a stamp for the director. And that's where I think even with the Evil Dead Rise stuff, it does feel like that in a good way. I know we talk about there's like a lot of comparisons that are happening right now. I think if Lee Cronin does one more movie just like this, where there are three siblings in a family that's being terrorized in a close quarters, I think you got some issues, bro. Like expand a little bit. I found myself even thinking, my guy, does Lee Cronin have two siblings? Because it's just it's it's down to the amount of kids in the family, right? It's down to that and even the charm of the youngest siblings. But it's such a wholesome movie at the same time, which I I really appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

I gotta ask you though, because I thought it was a very, you know, you could be on either side of the fence. I thought the ending was really fun. So I'm very curious to see what you all thought about the ending because I think that you can be on either side of the fence. You could probably say, oh, okay, like, okay, of course they're gonna go in that direction, or this is kind of maybe it's even a little bit cheesy if you want to call it that. But I thought it was really fun. I think it was a great way to wrap up the film.

SPEAKER_04 27:14

I loved it too. Honestly, I it was probably one of my favorite parts of the film. I don't feel like we always get, and without spoiling it too much, I I don't think we always, as horror fans, get something super satisfying at the end, and I felt very satiated by the end of the movie. I was excited with how it ended.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I love that you say the word satiated. It makes me want to give a parallel of like, I feel like my thirst was quenched. We got that. I was well fed, but there is uh there's like one silly aspect of the ending. Let me just start by saying I enjoyed it. No complaints. What happens on paper, what we see on screen, I'm here for. There is just like one small detail of this that feels a little silly to me, and we'll talk about that in the spoiler zone after our break because it's is gonna definitely overshadow the way that I re-watch this movie because I feel like I'm just gonna have this joke in the back of my brain.

SPEAKER_04 28:11

I feel like I sense what you're talking about. I'm curious once we get to it, I I'm curious if we have the same thoughts because I picked up on something too.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Okay, I'm gonna write this down. Okay, thoughts on an and then we're gonna see what your take is, Christina.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

We're circling back to this.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Yeah, we're gonna loop on back. It is written. Now, that being said, obviously we have the ending being what it is. I think it's also a little different tonally than the rest of the movie. Not to say that it doesn't fit or that it doesn't go together, but the sensation you have at the end is a different experience than what you have throughout the I think just about the rest of the movie. And I think what that does is it balances out the experience for anyone who might be going into this. A, if you uh are here for the mummy, like the 1999 mummy, check yourself before you wreck yourself, dude. Like you're not gonna get it, just be okay with that. If you want something that is violent and vicious, okay, stick around for a bit. It's not gonna be quite as dire. This feels like such a weird way to dance around this in the spoiler-free section. It's not gonna be as dire as some of the other films that we've seen, but there's a lot happening here. I think your your thirst for blood will be quenched. But if you're the kind of person who is susceptible to the emotions of a movie, this is where I'm gonna encourage you to A, give it a shot, but also B, know it's gonna be real fucking rough, and then last but not least, know that it might be slightly okay at the end.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Maybe, yeah. I think what's really funny is, and you kind of touched on this too as you were talking earlier, Chris, and there's just so many people asking me if I was going to see the new mummy with Brendan Fraser when I told them I was going to see this movie. And I'm like, What no? I'm going to see Lee Cronin's the move, the mummy, the one that's the one that's actually out right now. But it made me wonder were there people going into this movie actually thinking it could be that? Like without seeing maybe they didn't see a trailer, didn't look into it, maybe they just saw that there was a mummy movie out and went to go see it and actually thought that that's what they were gonna get.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

That's exactly why he had to say Lee Cronin's the mummy.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

I know, I know. I just even as I yeah, even as I was in the theater looking around, and I'm like, I go to this theater a lot. Listen, the city that I'm in, it's not popular to go to this AMC. So I'm sitting there usually by myself in this theater or with my wife. Friday night, it's a new movie, whatever. There's a lot of people in this theater, and I'm looking around, I'm like, are you all actually here for this horror mummy, or are you thinking it's something else? I'm just curious. So I was trying to get a vibe check throughout the movie, and I don't know. I don't know. It was interesting, it was a thought.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Did they all sit through it? Did anyone everyone sat through it?

SPEAKER_00 31:03

No one left, no one left, everyone sat through it. So hopefully, you know.

SPEAKER_04 31:07

With the price of movie tickets now, I'd be surprised if they got up. I'm like, I'm gonna white knuckle through this entire thing if I paid twenty dollars for a movie ticket.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Well, people did walk out of in a violent nature, but different economy back when that movie came out. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

But yeah, I think that is exactly it. I think that if you do expect to see something other than what this movie is, and this movie is definitely a darker, more it's a slower, darker, heavier film than you might be used to in a mummy film of any time before. And so I think if you're going into it wanting some kind of that action adventure style, it's just you're just gonna be disappointed. But if you're a horror fan that has wanted a darker version of a classic monster movie, then this is probably something along the lines for you. So it really just depends on what your mood is, I suppose.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Yeah, and I think if you're someone who really liked Evil Dead Rise, I think you're gonna enjoy this. Like, I think that if you're a fan of gore, if you like body horror, you're gonna get your fill of it to Chris's point. I it is it is a lot, but I think that there's something also really great about the humor in this movie. I felt myself laughing a lot and not at anything that the movie did badly. The characters were genuinely so relatable and so funny in certain parts. So I think that if you are into Lee Cronin, if you're into that visual style, if you're into gore, you're gonna have a really good time watching this movie.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Well, let's actually brace some folks for exactly what level of gore they'll see. Sean, how would you describe the gore score?

SPEAKER_00 32:50

There is definitely a solid amount of gore in this one. I think there are just a lot of grotesque images. There's a lot of cringy moments, there's a lot of, you know, neck biting, teeth pulling, nail clipping, flesh ripping, or stripping action. And I think even though it's not non-stop, the impact and the quality is there, and it's very intentional. And for that, it's earning a solid medium high gore score.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

And what about the animal report?

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Well, a little birdie told me that this one was not great.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Let's go ahead and get into our ratings then. Lee Cronin's the Mummy from 2026. Was it a hack or a slash? I think I'm gonna go first here just to get mine out of the way. I want to note up front this is not a movie that should work as well as it does. When you go into a movie expecting the mummy, you think, great, I'm gonna have a fucking blast. When you get how depressing this movie is, you're like, shit, what am I doing? This movie abandons almost everything that's familiar about its own title. It bets entirely on family grief and the processing of loss and body horror, and it's a bet that pays off. It's visually sharp, it's emotionally committed to what it's setting out to do, and it's also genuinely mean in ways that feel earned rather than cheap. Sometimes I'm watching this movie and I'm thinking, Dan, Lee Crony, you're a bad motherfucker. Like you got a lot going on. The Evil Dead Rise comparison is fair. I'm not gonna pretend otherwise, but the film has enough of its own identity, even within that, I think, to stand on its own two legs. It does run a little long. I mentioned that. Uh Tidercutt could make it better. But what I love about this, and what I respect about this, is it is a confident, well-crafted, and very gross piece of horror filmmaking from a director who clearly knows exactly what he intends to do.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

I am excited that after almost a century, we are finally getting a very, very scary mummy. I really enjoyed this film. Like I had mentioned before, there were parts that were funny, there were parts that were heart-wrenching. I think you get a little bit of everything in this movie. And to me, something that makes an effective horror film is caring about the characters, is really diving into their backstories, who they are as people, and just giving a shit about whether or not they live or die at the end. And I think that this movie did a really, really great job at making me feel for these characters, pulling at my heartstrings, but then also really cringing me out in certain parts, in most parts. So I have to give this movie a slash.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Love it, love it. Going into the mummy, as we know, I said I was a little bit skeptical. All of the attempts to remake, redo, reboot, whatever for my beloved Universal Monster movies have been just pretty hit or miss over the years. And I think just based on the fact that this one is led by Lee Cronin, and not that he has this extensive amount of work that I enjoy by any means, but I did really enjoy Evil Dead Rise. I think you match that with the trailers that we were getting, and I was hopeful. And I think it looked like this one was going to be very different from what we've gotten in the past and a whole lot darker. And for the most part, that's exactly what this is. We got this grime-soaked, dread heavy take on this classic monster, turned it upside down, gave it a new direction. And I think the best part is that it's not even the monster that you're used to. I wouldn't even say that this movie is trying to be like anything else in this mummy franchise because it's not, right? I think from 1932 to 2017, it's truly its own thing, which I think makes this one very special. And I think, you know, I don't know. I say that with a grain of salt because I also know that there will be people who argue that this movie is not original for some other specific reasons. And listen, everyone has opinions. You're not entirely wrong if that's how you feel. This movie definitely wears its influences on its sleeve. You feel a lot of other movies while watching this one. You have a lot of exorcist vibes, you even have omen vibes. There's a lot of vibes that feel very familiar with this one, but overall I feel like this used those influences and still made a very entertaining movie. I think this film lives and dies by its atmosphere from the very beginning. It feels oppressive with the tight spaces, this heavy air, it's a constant sense that something ancient and wrong has been disturbed. I think what this film does really, really well is keeping you in this really uncomfortable state that it just letting these moments linger just a little longer than feels right. And what this movie also does very well is it shines both visually and audibly. We've talked about it, the cinematography, especially those split diopter shots, which I know are very overrated sometimes, but I actually really enjoyed them in this movie. The sound design really shined because it added so much tension, it was perfectly balanced throughout the film, and just the use of practical effects to bring our monster to life in this movie was really well done. And when you blend all of these things together, it creates this constant sense of unease. And even though I don't think you can really hold this up to Boris Karloff and the mummy from 1932, it does create its own space in the mummy universe for me. I think it's giving you a fresh story, a new antagonist. It's less about eternal love and more about ancient cursed generational trauma. And so if you are looking for anything remotely similar to any other mummy film before it, whether you're a fan of the classics or the modern takes, it won't fully awaken the curse that you are chasing. But if you are just into a new idea, a new story, exploring different ancient mythology, and you like the themes and the style of Evil Dead Rise, you might find yourself enjoying watching Lee Cronin's the Mummy get unwrapped. And I know I had a good time, and so for me, it digs up enough of that ancient dread to earn itself a slash.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Lee Cronin's the Mummy for 2026 has earned a universal slash. Now we talked about a lot here, but there is a lot more that we have to say with incredible specificity when we return from our break. We'll see you in a bit.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

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SPEAKER_01 41:17

Welcome back, folks. You're not entering the spoiler zone for Lee Cronin's The Mummy from 2026, which has earned a Universal Slash. We have a lot to unpack here, but before we get into the specifics of why it earned a Universal Slash, Sean, let's go through that sleigh by sleigh.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Yeah, the kills in this one, they're spaced out, but they're memorable when they hit. There's a strong emphasis on body horror, and then there's a couple of just really standout moments that lean into that Cronin's signature style. It's messy, it's uncomfortable, and it's just drawn out enough to make you squirm a little bit. And listen, the body count isn't huge. We get a total of five confirmed kills or deaths in this one, but the quality definitely outweighs the quantity in this one. And it's really just starting with the unfortunate person who we don't know the name just slowly rotted away in that sarcophagus with the Nasmiranian in them.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Which, you know, R.I.P. to that child who eventually died what feels like probably a century later.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

But damn. Imagine that that's your fate. You're gonna get real crusty, real dusty.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

It's unfortunate for sure. And you, you know, I could tell, like I would be mad too when, you know, when uh Gamal and the magician, you know, go to open this thing up and check on this person. I'm gonna be mad too. So Gamal, he met his untimely death with one of those like hooked pieces of chains that just like was holding the sarcophagus up and suspended him into the air by his face, and just ooh, that was gnarly.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

First, what a fucking kill. Terrible. I my my face hurt just watching it. But second, I think we can all agree that this is what the fuck we expected in Final Destination bloodlines from the guy who got jacked up with his fucking piercings in the tattoo shop. Oh, yeah. This is what we had. A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

That is true. We definitely got something way different than we thought in that one for sure.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

But yeah, this is like if Evil Dead Rise met the mummy, met Pet Cemetery, and also met Final Destination at the same time. That's what this movie is.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Do we need like a Lee Cronin final destination? Is that what we're asking for here?

SPEAKER_04 43:35

Oh my god, don't tempt me with a good time. That sounds like my dream come true. He could do bloodlines again. We need a bloodlines part two.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Oh my gosh. But yeah, so that kill really, I mean, that kill set the tone, right? That was just one that really hit. And, you know, it goes on for a while before I guess we we see the What I didn't realize at the time, but then realized after watching the movie, or like towards we get to the end, and they're like talking about it a little bit that these were actually the two sons that Gamal had from the beginning that died in this plane crash.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Holy shit, what a fucking scene when we have this kid on the side of the road on his bike, and then you just see the plane spiraling and falling in the background. Oh my gosh. I absolutely loved how we even introduced the concept of these kills. But to see what we saw, you've never seen a death like this in any mummy movie ever. We had eyeballs that were reminiscent of the 2006 Black Christmas. We had those out there. We had head impalements straight through the fucking eye. Disgusting. And also I loved every second of it.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

It was a grotesque scene for sure. It was gnarly. Like if Gamal's death wasn't enough for you to set the tone, it was seeing, even though we didn't see the crash happen in real time, just seeing the aftermath of it was pretty, pretty gnarly. And for me at the time, I was like, okay, that sucks. These two pilots died. Why were they even like trap traveling with this fucking sarcophagus, anyways? And then realizing that it was the Suns, that was a little bit more like heartbreaking that they went down trying to move this sarcophagus, which I guess you know it shouldn't have been moved, but I guess they felt like they had to because of a potential flooding. But you know, we then go to the house anyways and still see, and there was no flo I don't know. Listen, I'm not here to poke holes in the story, but I didn't see any flash floods happening. That's all I'm saying. But yeah, brutal. But you know, then after that, it's a long time before we end up seeing like anything really crazy as far as kills or deaths. But listen, the grandma's kill doesn't let up. That one was absolutely balls to the wall, just that's crone into the max right there.

SPEAKER_04 46:03

That poor grandma, as if she didn't go through enough getting head butted. I was like, this poor woman. I the last thing it was probably one of my favorite kills, even though I loved the character so much. The last thing I expected was for her daughter to look down and see a pack of what coyotes eating away at her.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

It was gnarly. I mean, okay, listen, we knew that it was some crazy, like crazy shit going down from the moment she got headbutted. As soon as she starts praying, and Katie is like with the the eye is just moving. That's all I needed to know. Like, some shit was going down for sure. But yeah, once we finally get that one-on-one scene and she's getting choked out by her own crucifix, that was gnarly. That was that was a lot for sure. And then to get yeah, that's it's just oh man, hold on. Yeah, just getting choked out was wild.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

The abuelita of it all. Oh my gosh. Folks who listen to this podcast for a while know I'm still sore about abuelitas. My my grandmother passed a few years ago, so the loss of a grandmother in a movie is already a lot for me, but also they made this grandmother so fucking funny and so relatable. She has a couple moments. One joking about like the kids staying in the will, two, she makes a cake for every birthday Katie missed. Like that is for sure the Aurita who thinks you're not eating enough. Like, absolutely, this feels like real grandma energy in the best possible fucking way. But to then lose her life the way she did, devastating. But then to also go to her wake and to have her body just a bitten into and the embalming fluid sucked out of her, and then licking it up, and we get the split diopter shot of the tongue lapping up the embalming fluid on the floor with the horrified family in the background. Bro, my question is how the fuck do you live this down? Sure. Priority one, get through this shit. Priority two, you have to face these people again. Like, these bitches know your family.

SPEAKER_04 48:06

Yeah, you're and all these, like, these, all these cheese mosa old ladies, you don't think that they're gonna keep talking about this for the until the end of time? They were already talking at the wake. Yeah, I was like, oh my god, the cheese mail around town about this woman and her crazy, crazy grandchildren.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

This is gonna be talked about for decades for sure.

SPEAKER_04 48:25

But I will say, going back to her original actual death, why was no one getting out of that car? I was like, can we move? I know you're in shock, but can we like get up? Can we move? I get there is a pack of coyotes, but I'm like, something can be done. Throw a shoe out the window, do something. I'm like seeing this woman on the windshield and haven't moved a singular inch, I would I would be pissed.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Yeah, you gotta try a little bit harder, quite frankly. It's just coyotes, just coyotes.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Yeah, I mean, grab a stick, start swinging, you know. You gotta do something for sure.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

But if the grandma is out there, then also you can be out there, Charlie. It's you or the grandma, you're too afraid to think about how your grandma feels.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Listen, I at least, you know, and I not to make light of the way she died. I literally, I'm glad that we didn't get what I thought we were gonna get as the crucifix was like sliding up her body to go choke her out. Like, I don't want to go in that direction. I was like, listen, there's a track record here with Evil Dead films, and I didn't know if we were gonna go there. And thank God we I don't I'm I'm thankful that we didn't because I think that would have been like just way too heavily played into Evil Dead slash the Exorcist. So at least it was the chokeout scene. That's all I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

It was bad enough that she already lifted a leg and pulled up her dress as an undead person and then said to get a piece of her. Yeah, Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 49:51

Talk about cringy moments during the movie. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I because I pictured my grandma, and then I was like, Oh, this is horrible, and this needs to stop right now.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Oh god.

SPEAKER_04 50:04

I was like, someone take this old lady out, please, please.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

That's that evil dead energy, though. That's that evil dead energy.

SPEAKER_04 50:11

I'd like to talk to Lee Cronin's therapist and just ask them quite a few questions based off this movie and Evil Dead.

SPEAKER_00 50:18

Yeah, it's pretty wild. So all of that was a lot for sure. It was definitely a lot. What I think is interesting to talk about that, you know, I was trying to think through the entirety of like this movie was well, not the entirety of the movie, but once we get through towards the end of the movie and we're like trying to figure out a resolution here, I was very sure that Katie was going to die. But to my surprise, she didn't die. And then when Charlie got possessed or took the possession or whatever, he also doesn't die. So I'm like, okay, so this is a pretty, like, fairly easy transformation process. Like you can just pass this thing along willy-nilly if you know the words.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah, it's got the it follows vibe to it, where you just gotta keep that shit going like bad chain mail. You know what I mean? It is the the AOL email that is coming back.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

If you don't pass this on to seven people in the next 20 minutes, the Nasmiranian's coming for you.

SPEAKER_04 51:20

We should try to our own Nasmiranian chain mail. Oh my god, no. My worst nightmare. I like remember these from the MySpace days. Send this to seven people, or you will have bad luck for the rest of your life. I yeah, don't want to participate. But I will say that the possessions were really interesting because I'm like, is this person dead? Is this there were a lot of like people dying coming back, people dying coming back, and I'm like, what is going on? I will say that the magician at the end, that possession we don't see, but probably like one of my favorite things about the entire movie.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

We were rooting for it, like I didn't know that we were gonna get it. It's not that it's like that surprising. I just didn't think like I was really content at the time when they were just tapping Morris code on the sarcophagus, and they're like, okay, so daddy's just in the in the sarcophagus in the basement now, and I can come down and do Morris Code and talk to him. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, okay, I'm kind of cool with that ending, but then we go a little bit further and and we have this whole plan to pass it into the magician and give her a little you know piece of her own medicine, which you know I'm here for, like kind of rooting for it because like you took like an innocent child, you know what I mean? So I'm here for that, but at the same time, like you know, she kind of like had to do something, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 52:41

I just didn't expect her to live. That gunshot wound, I was like, gee, she's gushing blood. And I then you go into her cell and see her. I was probably one of the most shocking parts of the movie. I was really excited about it, but I was like, How is this woman still alive?

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Yeah, I did have her dead like listed as dead until we got to that scene. I was like, Oh, never mind.

SPEAKER_01 53:02

Well, here's a here's the thing, right? She's the magician, she's a cultist. Also, she squeezed more blood than goes in a bird in her hand earlier in the film. So I think she's got some supernatural stuff going on that's just really keeping her tied to the life force. I think that's where we are. Now, the stuff with Katie and expecting her to die, I need you to know this is another thing that I'm like struggling with. The entire movie I was thinking about Evil Dead Rise, and I was thinking about specifically how in Evil Dead Rise that whole family gets fucked up, but they do spare the youngest daughter and the cool fucking aunt. When you have that whole vibe, and now watching this one, and then what we see what starts to happen to Maud, I kept thinking, oh my god, this movie is really fucked up. The whole family is gonna go. And where Lee Cronin maybe gave us a little bit of a reprieve from this in Evil Dead Rise, we're suddenly gonna get jacked up here, and even Maud is gonna die. I thought that they were goners. I am I'm torn because I am of the mind that I am happy that they lived. Katie has suffered so much, the family has suffered so much, but then at the end of the day, I'm also like, what was this all for? Just so Carmen could die? That sucks. Yeah, I didn't think about it that way, but you have a point.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

It was a lot. Hey, listen, those kids are feeling it for sure. I mean, you have Maud who went through shit, pulled all of her fucking teeth out, so I don't know what that's gonna feel like. You also have the son who just bashed his head into the bedroom like bedpost for what 20-30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Yeah, he got the talk to me special.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

Yeah, if nothing else, you just have a massive headache for a while now.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Your boy is concussed, probably a TBI. He cannot play any contact sports.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. You're done. You just gotta chill now because yeah, that's wild.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

It just does beg the question because uh I want to make sure we don't forget about this. Christina, I was talking about something about the ending that that stood out for me. What is your prediction of what that was?

SPEAKER_04 55:22

And now now I'm nervous that I set myself up for failure, but I will say that when I I saw him as the mummy, I could not stop giggling. I don't know, there was something about his look compared to Katie's that I could not get over. And I can't remember it, like is reminding me of something, and I cannot, for the life of me, put my put a like a finger on it, but there was something that I kept like thinking of when I saw him, and I was just like, this looks a little silly to me. So I don't know if that's what you were thinking, but that's what I was okay.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

I'm so glad you're probably not gonna be able to see this. Thoughts on the end. When they revealed Charlie in a hoodie in a wheelchair, it was reminiscent of Anakin as burned Vader post-Mustaphur and also Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Oh my god, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_04 56:11

And that's all I could see. For me, it's a mix of 1000%. It gave me like his eyeballs gave me like some weird X-Men vibes, and I was like, what is happening here? And then also 100%, Chris. I feel like it's like a mix of what you and Sean saw for me.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

It was a little bit silly just because it felt like it was there was less effort put into the looks of Charlie than it was for the looks of Katie, which, you know, when we think of all the great things that this movie did, and I think that one of the things that really stood out that made this movie so special was the use of the practical effects, because there are some, there's some CGIUs, but you just have to praise you have to praise the film's dedication to the use of practical effects. The the visual of the mummy or Katie as you know, this possessed Nasmiranian in the film was inspired by the preserved bog bodies that were housed at the Dublin National Museum that Cronin had access to during the research leading up to this film. So there's a lot of really cool influences that he did. And what they did with the detailed prosthetics and the makeup, instead of just layering on digital effects for the Nasmiranians like appearance, I just think was really, really well done.

SPEAKER_04 57:31

Yeah, I agree. I feel like the practical effects were one of the biggest highlights of the movie for me. That nail cutting scene, when we get a really close up. Oh my god, I was like, the prosthetics team deserves all of the kudos because those moments, I feel like I am, I think CGI, when done right, is great, can add to a film. But I think that practical effects, whenever you can have them, are so much more effective to me. And I think that that specific scene in the bathroom, there were so many moments of seeing like skin peeling. And I was uh watching an interview where they were talking about like the layers of the skin and how they crafted each layer and like how some of them were paper, some of them were latex to kind of give like this really gross peelback effect. Yeah, I think that the the practical effects were so incredibly done, and that's why it was kind of disappointing. I feel like that that reveal of Charlie at the end was disappointing because so much of the practical effects in the movie were so incredible.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

It really was. Oh my gosh, I'm I'm even just thinking about the nail scene again, because let me just point out I hate feet. I I'm not into it, I don't want to look at feet, I don't want to touch feet. Like feet gross me the fuck out, even when they're perfectly hygienic. When we get these nasty nails, and you have this loving mother, okay, find you a mom who would cut your crusty fucking nails like this because holy shit, a mother's love is unparalleled. But as she's fighting this, putting in noticeable force, I thought we were gonna get the jaws of life in here to get these nails off. I expected the nail itself to just rip off, and I thought that was gonna be a layer. Right, that's what I'm saying. When it goes the opposite direction and goes just straight the fuck up the leg, guys, like why is out here doing shit I never could have imagined. I've never once been concerned about my nail ripping up my skin, and now that's all I can think about.

SPEAKER_04 59:33

I fully squealed, and that was one of the moments where the AMC chairs decided to buzz and vibrate. So I was like freaking out in this movie theater. I was like, the poor people next to me are gonna be like, girl, get your shit together, please. Calm down. I was not okay. And then going into that specific part, I remember the camera angle. It's something I talked about at the beginning. That like really tight shot of the foot with like the mom in the in the background. I was like, oh my god, I'm I'm I might actually be sick. It was one of the few moments where I was like, I might need like a little bathroom break.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:10

When when we see the flesh peeling, this is also a moment when I saw just how far gone Katie was. And I I found myself, I didn't do it, but I found myself wanting to read the synopsis on Wikipedia to see what the fuck the ending was because I was hurting for Katie and then I was physically hurting for Katie. I'm like, fuck, how much more can she go through?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

Oh my god. It was like even before that one nail incident, it was the first nail clip incident where the nail flies into her mouth, into her tooth, or whatever. Like that. I was like, where did it go? Where did it go? And then she's like reaching out to like pry it from her mouth. And I'm like, oh, that is disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Do you also have the presence of mind to even look up there? I never would have looked up there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

Yeah, I'd be looking everywhere else, but right there. But yeah, listen.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:01

As you're freaked out by Fe, I'm very freaked out by loose hair. It's like disgust. Like I have to clean my hairbrushes like so, so often, because the idea of loose hair hanging around freaks me out. It gives me like the heebie jeebies. And so when I see the grandma like pulling those clumps of hair out of the hairbrush, I was like, there is no love like a grandma's love. There is no love like a grandma's love because I wanted to jump out of my skin. That entire scene was so incredibly effective. If you are someone that like loves body horror, that scene, you're just gonna probably not the right use of this term, but like you're gonna eat up that scene. It is so good, so so good, and so effective at cringing you out in every single piece.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

This is just such a great moment of how a great example of how we're built different. Because I'm sitting here talking about the body horror of a fucking toenail flying around. You're just like, yeah, the hair from the brush. And not wrong, not no, Christina, not no, not no. Loose hair is gross. Also, like hair freaks me out overall. Like fucking when men have like hairy chest or backs or butts, super fucking gross, and we see that all the time in horror movies. I don't even need it to be on the brush.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:18

We do be seeing tons of hairy butts in horror movies, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

Oh my gosh. But listen, the complement to these scenes, though, the way that visually these practical effects scenes work so well is with that sound design that we've been talking about. Because you also can't you can't let that go because the what the sounds that they made for the little flesh-ripping scenes for all of the little things, the creaks in the house, like all of the sound design throughout this movie was so well done. It literally was subtle when it needed to be, it was eerie when it needed to be. It was just constantly building tension throughout this entire film.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

Yeah, I think that the the effectiveness with the attention to detail, it's like the sound design was so it was like an exclamation point to all of the visuals that we were getting. It just like amplified all of these like really grotesque images that we had to watch. And then also the really sad moments and the really dreadful moments. I feel like that one scene with the magician where she's kind of like luring Katie in the garden, and I'll talk about it more later. But that scene, I was I had a pit in my stomach. And it wasn't even because visually I was super scared, but it's the sound design was freaking me out. And I was like, something bad, something bad is afoot. Obviously, I know we're watching a horror movie, something bad is gonna happen to this poor little kid, but it really it like filled me with dread, I think for lack of a better word.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

It is the Stewie Griffin, there's treachery afoot, there's actually there. However, did you all read the letter that Lee Cronin wrote to projectionists for when the movie were premiered? Okay. So I'm gonna I'll put a link to this in the show description. But there's a PDF going around signed by Lee Cronin. Also, his signature is super fucking cool. It has like a little like smiley face with glasses, super cute. Stationery from the mummy, a stamp of like New Line and Warner Brothers. And it says Important Audio playback levels. Geo Projectionist. A group of insanely talented sound nerds built the incredible audio escape that drives the experience of this movie, Lee Cronin's tsunami. Humans from Ireland, Spain, Denmark, and the US all came together to create a sonic roller coaster that is designed to scare your audience in many unique ways. Please join our international team by making sure you play back this movie at the sound level it was designed for. The correct levels are between 6.4 and 7.0. You'll know the acoustics of your rooms best, but anything less than 6.4 and the film will lose the cinematic dynamic we created. Please help us terrify the world. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:06

I love him. Oh my god, what that is incredible. I feel like it's also just giving like giving such kudos to like his team that obviously helped build this world. It makes me just love him even more.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:20

Yeah, that's pretty fucking awesome for sure. It's a great I everything that went into that was great. I also just want to shout out the song choices for the film because the soundtrack was great. I love when we get some good like old classic rock. We have the band playing, we have the Allman brothers playing. Just great stuff, just great song choices.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:41

And I feel like we couldn't talk about a Lee Cronin film without talking about the set design. I think we talked about it a big a bit at the beginning, but the sets themselves were so beautiful and they like lent themselves to this like very creepy atmosphere. I feel like even when we were back in New Mexico. I felt like I was like, this is very reminiscent of like a house in New Mexico, but it's like still dusty. It still gives that like ancient Egypt vibe, but we're in a completely different part of the world. I thought that the set design was really incredibly done. And I feel like there was so many looking around the kids' rooms. It was so personal. Everything felt like very lived in. It felt like a real family lived there, not just like it was a set.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

Yeah, the set design was really well done. The whole house felt really good. It kept like it kept that like the choice to have it in a slightly similar desert type feeling vibe. Like I think that was a really good choice. And I think that it just the house felt really good from a set design perspective. It felt like it could almost be this kind of slightly creepy haunted house vibe. It gave you that kind of feeling as you were going through the house as well. So, like that just that upstairs hallway just felt like, you know, when the especially when Maud is like running across the hall to go to the bathroom, there's the moments where like they're both of the siblings are like leaning up against the door to try to hear what's going on in Katie's room, the conversations, like there's just a lot going on there, and the set design was really well done. It just felt really good for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

You're talking about like the set design, you're talking about the house looking like a haunted house. There are so many good moments that happened in both of these locations, and I want to draw a parallel here because there's a specific scene that absolutely devastated me. It filled me with joy and then also devastated me at the same time. And it starts in flashback when we're thinking about him doing Morse code at the beginning of the film or the beginning of what we see of Charlie and Katie. And he's he's thumping it, the cameras is upside down, so we think that the thumping is starting from the mummy inside the tomb, and it was such a beautiful twist on that. But when we take this all the way back then to their house eight years later, and he is crying at Katie's bedside. I've seen so many movies in which there is a young girl who is possessed and the family is grieving at her side. Oh my gosh, I think about even the exorcism of Emily Rose. We didn't see anything like particularly dissimilar from that, but we have this moment where she is clicking her teeth and she is doing Morse code with her teeth, and then he finally catches on.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

This was for me like the emotional center of the movie. And it was this idea that she's a young girl who is trapped inside her own body, and she is desperately reaching back into the Rolodex of her memories for something that she learned in Girl Scouts to communicate with her father. This is the one of the last memories she has with her father before she had this uh eight-year slumber. And that's moving, right? It's sweet. The way that he shoots it, the quick cuts between Charlie's handwriting and then Katie's gnarling, clicking teeth that feels zombie-esque in some ways. It's both visually inventive, but also uh emotionally fulfilling. Like it feels like it earns it rather than just demands it from you.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:22

Yeah, and I feel like it also speaks to Lee Cronin's thoughts of the intelligence of his audience. I hate when directors like feel like they have to spoon feed you information. I love that we had like this waiting game, right? Like, how did how is this Morse code that we saw at the beginning of the film gonna pay off? And you don't think it's gonna pay off. You just think it's a really sweet moment between father and daughter. She's learning something, he's teaching her, it's great. And then it loops back so far into the film. And I think that that's something that I really liked about this film in general, is that I never felt like I was being spoon-fed information. I was like coming to conclusions on my own as an active audience participant, as a smart person watching horror, as opposed to, I feel like some directors have the tendency of kind of dumbing things down a bit for their audience. I think that was a really great example of.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

I'm sorry. Do you mean dumbing it down the way James Juan does and his fucking flashbacks and every movie he does?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:20

No knocking James One, no knocking James Wan. James Wan, if you want to cast me in anything, I'm I'm here and ready to go. But I will say, yeah, the flashbacks do have some spoon-feeding elements to them. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:34

Yeah, it is great though. I think it does allow you to kind of figure things out as you go along. And in specifically that moment, too, with the Morris code and the breakthrough of like figuring out there that there is a communication happening. I'm sure some people may have caught on a little bit quicker, but for me, I was like really into it because I felt like I discovered it with Charlie, and I'm like, oh fuck yeah, like we're like this is happening. That's wild. Like we just both came to that realization together. And so it kind of brings you into the moment really well. It is good, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

What I really want to hear from are all the horror fans who also were in Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc. And you discovered before Charlie that it was Morse code. I want to hear from y'all because I'm sure there's somebody out here who has the exact niche level of understanding that would make this super satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:27

Yeah, let us know. Let us know if you know Morse code and what was going on here for sure. I think one of uh another, like even just early on, the opening, the cold open of the film is just a it's a really great way for this film to kind of just set the tone. I think the film wastes no time setting it at setting that tone for you. I think when we have this, you know, we open on this almost this excavation that immediately feels wrong. Like you just you're this family you're following, they get home, something's not right, that bird is dead. What the fuck are they doing with this, with this tomb at their house? Like it just feels weird. It's not adventurous, it's not exciting, it's just tense and invasive, and it's really setting the tone for the film where you just immediately know something isn't right. And the tomb itself isn't grand, it's not mystical, it's not, it's not this crazy, like adventurous type thing where you're like uncovering history. It's just very claustrophobic, it's tight, it's almost suffocating, and there's this emphasis on this disturbance that's happening there. And when the first sign of, you know, you call it the mummy or the Nasmorean or wherever you want to call it, the present, the presence hits. It's subtle, but it's deeply unsettling. And it's really, we said it earlier, it's less about that jump scare tactic, even though there is a jump scare in there. You just realize that you shouldn't be here. That's the feeling that you get. And I think why it works so well is it just sets these expectations that this is not the swashbuckling version of the mummy. It's closer in spirit to the creeping dread of the old mummies, but it's just, listen, it's just wild. It's a good it's a good moment that just says exactly what this film is going to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:05

I feel like dread is such a perfect, I feel like dread is such a perfect way to describe the entire tone of this movie. I know I talked about it a little bit before, but that scene of the magician luring Katie in the garden was truly terrifying to me. I think growing up as like a kid in the 90s, you just heard about so many like child abductions and all of these like really, really scary things. I grew up in Texas for a little bit of my childhood, and there was like the amber alert of it all and everything. So it's just there, there was this sense of panic, I think, with both obviously the visual of Katie being lowred with like a candy bar and someone that she knows. And then also the sound design that really made me feel weirdly like a little kid again. I was like, oh no, wait, this is a bad thing. Like, this is a creepy stranger danger situation. This is something that I shouldn't be participating in. And flipping between that scene and then Charlie discovering the candy bars, I was so terrified. It was probably the most scared I was throughout the entire movie because I'm like, something bad is for sure happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:15

It was a lot of tension. I called it the Sleeping Beauty scene because it literally reminded me of the witch handing the fucking apple to Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, or maybe Snow White, that's what it is. Yeah, not the Sleeping Beauty, but Snow White. I'm like, what the fuck? This feels like okay, cool. I'm with it though.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:32

That was so fucking hard to watch. And you know, I I was reminded of little Adam Walsh. Adam Walsh became the story and the exact reasons why my mother never let me out of her sight ever. I grew up so sheltered, specifically because of this, where this kid was abducted from a Sears department at a mall. And looking at what Katie is experiencing, knowing that she had established a relationship with an earnest Layla, and to see that Layla's mom, the magician, is just going to prey upon her, and she's been grooming her for this. It is so sad, and I hated watching it because this is actually a moment where you read the one-line description of this, you know that a daughter goes missing, and you know that she comes back and shit ain't right. And again, I mentioned pet cemetery earlier. Sometimes dead is better. I don't know. I feel like in this case it might have been okay. However, you realize that she's the only daughter, that baby isn't born yet, and we know a son doesn't go missing. So as Katie continues to have these really fucking adorable moments with her brother, and she's like this sweet, brilliant, precocious young kid who's like also frustrated by the lack of accountability that her father has for her younger brother. I just kept thinking, damn, I don't want anything to happen to you. I am gutted right now that you have to suffer so much. And I don't plan to like necessarily have kids, but moments like this, like an effective child star to have such a strong performance in this movie to really demonstrate a level of caution and then also fear is just so painful to watch. And it makes me want to just protect something, to protect someone. I was thinking even just about the scene where we finally get to see what happened to Katie. And my God, it was devastating. And I know I continue to say that word, but that is not something I could ever stomach looking at. And I love that Charlie even pauses it. He's like, No, I don't think I I want to know. And you have this reversal of them as parents between like, do I know what happens or can I even face what happened? It is such a huge structural swing. This tape recontextualizes everything that kind that came before it. And obviously, in Evil Dead Rise, we had a tape as like exposition, so we heard that with one of the kids playing the sound. But in this movie, it again delivers emotional devastation alongside exposition, and you're watching the family watch what happened to Katie in a moment where they're also their world is breaking down in front of them because now they know that she's back, but they're confronted with their worst fears, like everything that they've been living with for the last eight years, except make it even fucking worse. Because how could you have possessed a demon? How could you have predicted a demon?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:27

And also, it's just like I'm not a parent. I can't imagine being a parent and seeing something like this. But I just kept thinking, I was like, oh my God, I cannot imagine your kid is back, they're in not the state they were in before. And then to realize like the suffering that they had gone through all this time that you were away from them and that they were just like a scared little kid. I think we'll get into the performances more later, but the little girl was so affected, so effective at like conveying dread, being scared. I I felt my heart strings were so tugged in that moment for her and then tugged for her parents. I can't imagine being confronted with the reality of like what your kid actually had to deal with and the fear of being surrounded in a tomb surrounded by 10 strangers or however many strangers you don't know, yeah, and carried over a dead body, your little kid. It was it was horrible. It really, really broke my heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:27

There's a specific aspect of like vulnerability with that. I was just having this conversation about a month ago when my dad was experiencing some things and we're working through some family stuff, and I have I don't know that I've really addressed a lot of this, but I'm the youngest of my five siblings, but then I have two younger brothers from a whole separate situation with my dad. But my I was talking in this like vulnerable moment with the the my younger brother, and I was like thinking back like there's a moment where like I experienced some shit and I was like suffering in a way, and all I wanted was my mom and dad, and I have never even told them about that or what happened to me because I know that their devastation, like what they will feel is this like worst feeling of wow, this is what we tried for so long to protect you from, or we couldn't protect you from it. And there's like the reality of what you experience, and then there's a reality of like how much that's going to hurt the people that you love, and that's such a difficult thing, right? And Katie obviously comes back, Katie is starting to heal and to start to recover, etc. But there's no world in which her parents did anything wrong, like they weren't bad parents, and that's what I actually appreciate, even about the characters in this movie. This is not a neglectful or absent team of parents here, and it makes it even more sad.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:56

Yeah, they weren't bad parents by any means, but you can definitely see the effects and the trauma that it has on both of them as parents, and as they like start to, you know, have these little arguments, even that come to light in the movie where they're giving each other kind of like those low blows of like putting the blame on you, putting the blame on me, whatever it is. And that's a really interesting dynamic. But yeah, I mean, even to just touch back on it, the ritual scene super harrowing. I think you said it, Chris, like it is one of the more Cronin-feeling sequences, very reminiscent of what he did in Evil Dead Rise. It's the curse doesn't feel magical, it feels very physical. You you see like the body begin to change, it's in like these really small, disturbing ways, the skin texture, movement, the breathing, the horror is in the whole process of that. It's not just this result, it lingers, and there's that deliberate pacing choice there where it stretches the moment just long enough to make you feel really uncomfortable without and without giving you like this immediate payoff, and it reframes this idea of the mummy as something more like a disease or a possession rather than a monster. And I think that's a very pivotal moment in the film, even though we get it so late in the film.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:15

Yeah, and the D the disease of mummification would be less transfertible if you weren't around licking so many fucking toes. This the demon is the toe licking.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:25

Come on, this is where it was so good. The evil dead vibes of it all.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:29

It's Chris's worst nightmare. Literally, Chris's worst ever nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:34

The toe coming the tongue coming out of the door and just licking the toes from underneath. I thought Lato was gonna get bit off. I wasn't prepared for the let me see how your piggies taste, and fucking the tongue just like swiggling out of underneath the door to. I was like, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:52

All the fucking way, no. No, no.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:56

It was like that moment was so ridiculous, and just all of the evil dead kind of vibes that followed after that, even with Katie like digging her way out of the what her floor out of the ceiling, like that whole thing was wild. I'm just thinking this is definitely something a deadite would be doing right now, just trying to pop up from the ceiling.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:20

Super Deadite, super dead, uh her, Mon, Carmen, Carmen back to life, spreading her laying on the okay. I can't get it.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

All of it, my grandma. All of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:32

That whole funeral sequence was oh my god, oh my god. Every single part. I was like, there's no way that this can get more gross. There's absolutely no way that they can make this grosser. I was like, she's licked toes at this point, and like, there's no way toenails fallen off, hair is everywhere. I'm like, there's absolutely no way I can be more disgusted. And then they just kept going. I think the embalming. I I never want to think about embalming fluid falling out of someone's face ever again in my entire life. That was horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:04

It is not something any of us ever needed to conceptualize. We never needed to see it, and yet it's here. You know what's gonna be fucking terrible the next time I have to go to a funeral. This like there is pre-the mummy and then post the mummy. Funerals already fucking suck. Now I'm gonna be looking at it way different.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

You're gonna be more is this gonna happen?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:30

You know what's gonna be horrible? I love a deviled egg. And I don't think I can ever eat a deviled egg ever again in my I don't I there's I don't think there's a world where I can eat a deviled egg, is basically what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:43

I at least have the comfort of knowing I've never had a deviled egg.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:46

Deviled eggs are good if they're made right. This blood splattered deviled egg seems like a definite choice to have at Halloween Horror Nights.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:54

Yeah, I was just gonna say, this seems like a great moment for Sean's kitchen. We need the deviled egg recipe with a little splash of sriracha.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:02

We got the Lee Cronin blood splattered deviled egg special. Here we go. Recipe on its way.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:08

You know, I know we've talked a lot here about this family. Someone we haven't given a lot of attention to that I would love to point out. In our bonus episode, we talked about how Rachel Vice was like a awakening for me when I was younger. Absolutely set the standard for I think the level of intellect and the type of person that I like now. And let me tell you this Dahlia, MVP and reawakening for me. If ever anything in me was in a slumber, Dahlia has brought it back to life. Because what the fuck do you mean that you are such a competent and capable person for her to be such a badass that she not only flies around the world with this VHS tape, also a little unrealistic that you would expect him to have a VHS player, but go off. But you're gonna remember from watching it the one to two times tops that you've seen it, you're gonna remember the incantation, and then you're also going to fucking put your fingers through the scorpion holding your because you also had to extract that. Brutal finger is in there and press against your vocal cord so that you can rasp out the shit to fucking swap the possession host.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

That was badass.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:22

My god, gorgeous, capable, competent, badass, probably one of my favorite final girls of the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:30

Yeah, she was badass. The moment that she, well, first of all, yeah, the moment that the scorpion was going through her throat and she like went in there and yanked it out, that was gnarly. But then the the moment that she decided that she was just gonna plug that hole so she can speak the incantation. I was like, okay, I'm here for it. You know, it was one thing to be like the really tenacious detective that investigates and really gets to the bottom of things, playing a really crucial role in uncovering like the mystery behind the abduction and all this stuff. But it was another to be like such a pivotal role into making sure that this ended. I was like, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:09

I have never really given a shit about the cops or detectives in movies. I haven't. Even in the song movies, don't really care about them. But her, she has like redefined this for me. She's completely like, I am ruined now. Thank you, Dahlia.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:27

Another character that really, really worked for me. Oh god, and I can't, I can't overstate how much I loved her was the grandma. I thought she was perfect. I think everything that she gave to the role was perfection. I feel like she brought like levity, horror, everything. I was very sad to see her go, even though the death was epic. But that moment, there was like a small moment where she pops her dentures out at the like they're all eating around the kitchen table. I laughed so hard. And the laughs in this film felt so organic to the characters that were giving them to us. It didn't feel like it was like out of place or like trying to get like a cheap, a cheap laugh. I loved her performance so much. And yeah, I I just can't overstate how much I was I was very sad to see her go.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:20

I loved that moment because I had such a vivid memory, and this movie actually sent me back. And I haven't thought about this. This is now the 11 years since my grandfather passed, and I had a very strong flashback of my grandfather doing the exact same thing with his dentures before I ever knew what dentures were. You're like, Grandpa, what are you doing with your teeth?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:44

Yeah, he fucked me up. It scared the shit out of me, and then it got real funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:47

Yeah, she definitely added like just a perfect amount of comedy into this movie that turned into just enough camp later on. Like, no matter what part of the film we're in, she's either adding like this levity of comedy. Or she's just adding to the campy, like ridiculousness of the horror that we're watching. And so, yeah, definitely a really cool character. I also thought it was really interesting that the girl who plays Dahlia and the girl who plays the magician are both the actual, they're the first, both of them are the first Egyptian actors to actually appear in any mummy movie, which I thought was really wild. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:27

I mean that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:28

We think of how many films there are over all these years, and there's they're literally the first ones, which I think is really uh cool for them to be a part of this movie, which is I don't know. I thought that was an interesting fact for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:42

Wow. Really hate that it took until 2026 for that to happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:45

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:46

Yeah, travesty, honestly. I feel like we also can't talk about this movie and not talk about the kids because I think that kids get a bad rap in movies a lot of the time. Sometimes they like fuck them kids is a real thing that I think a lot of the time. I will say that the kids, especially the two that played the younger versions of Katie and Sebastian at the beginning, I thought that their dynamic was so believable. I think that they played siblings extremely well. The family dynamic felt very authentic. It felt really grounded. And I think, especially with Katie and especially the scene that we get of her when we actually see the possession and everything happening, such a young kid to be able to show this like wide array of emotions and really instill fear. Like I was, I felt like I was Katie at one point. I was like, I am feeling so much dread. I think that the kids crushed it. I could not go on with this review and not talk about how amazing that they were.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:50

Yeah, when we get that opening scene, yeah, when we get that scene where Katie is absolutely wailing on her brother for throwing this doll over the side, and the parents break it up, and then Sebastian's like, not gonna lie, I did do it. Fucking hilarious. And then for Katie's response after Charlie's trying to sway her to be, don't call me butterfly, I hate you both right now. Like, at least she was specific in saying right now. Like she was a girl who was setting her boundaries, and that's why it also like just guts me to see what comes of her, and you know, if nothing will ever need another of this movie again. What does her road to recovery look like, and how does she become her own full self? Because she was on a trajectory to be an absolute firecracker. Like what incredible spirit she had.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:45

Yeah, I think what's really interesting with this whole dynamic of everything that you know, you're looking at like everything that went down with this movie, and I'm just thinking to myself as I'm watching this movie, and I'm putting myself in in the place of these families, and I'm just thinking, like, could you could you do this? Could you be a part of this? Like, could you be the person that actually has to deal with keeping this Nasmiranian from getting out? Like, could you be the one that has to go out and find somebody that has to be transferred? Like, can you do that? Here's the thing. That's a burden.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:21

There are two types of people in the world the Nasmiranian devils or the keeper of the Nasmiranian devils. And I love a good ritual. I am a very habit-driven person, but I do not think I could commit to this because you can't just do this alone. You have to rely on others, and we all know how much group projects suck.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:40

It's just tough. Like, I don't know, I don't know that I could be out there trying to like grab kids, you know, because they're you know what I mean? Like, it just seems like a bad time. You can grab some other people, maybe, but I just don't know if it's worth it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:55

No, you'd have to like be you'd have to be Edward Cullen in his vigilante era, where you are consuming the souls of whatever fucking mortals to feed your human blood, but you're intentionally choosing terrible people to do it. There you go.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:12

Yeah, a la Dexter. Like, I will be the Dexter of keeping keeping this thing in the tomb, but I'm like, I'm not gonna go grab kids. I'm I feel like I'm just gonna have to do more work on my end because the the bodies will get consumed that much more quickly. But I'm like, it has to be bad people or it can't be anyone.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:30

Yeah, I'm just letting that fucker out, you know. Just go do your thing, man. Let somebody else deal with this guy.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:36

You're like plagues, death, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:39

I mean, come on, they dealt with it before, they'll deal with it again, it'll be fine. Somebody will figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:43

It's like the idea of working smarter, not harder, but Christine is willing to work harder as long as it means not taking innocent kids.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:51

But it doesn't take the question. I think ultimately, Sean, we just don't leave this up to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:57

Is yeah, don't leave it up to me because I'm not dealing with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:00

I don't think you should be in charge.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:01

To be clear, that is the vibe of every what if scenario that we have. Count on Sean to lead you out of something unless you compromise his opportunity to survive, in which case, trust Sean for nothing.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:15

Respectable.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:16

Oh my gosh. The all the the other thing that I think is interesting is you know, we know that you know Lee Cronin comes off of Evil Dead Rise. We know that James Juan asked Lee Cronin to make a mummy film. Cronin's not really interested in this movie at first, but then apparently James Juan asks him to make a terrifying mummy movie, and so then Cronin accepts it. I think Cronin then turns down a sequel to Evil Dead Rise in order to make this film. So the question is did we did we just get an Evil Dead Rise sequel in the form of a mummy because he really wanted to make an Evil Dead Rise sequel? Not no knock against him, but if your mindset was so set on making that sequel, and then you were kind of like guided into doing this mummy movie, there's a lot of heavy influence, there's a lot of feelings of Evil Dead vibes in this movie. I wonder, you know, is this just a mummified Evil Dead sequel?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:17

If you told me that Lee Cronin's The Mummy 2026 was part of the Evil Dead franchise, I'd be okay with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:24

There's a connection, I think. Just my two cents.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:26

It is a curious thought. It's it's almost as though you know how you have these examples of your work. Let's say you go into an interview and you're like, Wow, I know I want to talk about this thing, and whatever they ask me, I'm gonna make it fit. I feel like the vision of this is very much in his mind. He's like, I'm gonna make it fit. And then we have the mummy, and maybe that's a blessing and a curse, right? What people are saying a lot of right now is that this feels too close to Evil Dead Ride to fully be its own thing. I don't fully agree with that. I do think that there's a lot in here that is very distinct and it feels more like calling cards of style versus just completely redundant. We talked about this in the bonus episode. You have Dracula and the Mummy. Those movies are literally the same fucking movie, down to even some of the same actors in the same role, they are the same movie, and that is, I think, the also the poetic relationship that we have with Evil Dead Rise and the Mummy.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:26

Yeah, I think you can live on either side of it. I think that what separates this movie is that it doesn't feel like another mummy film, but then what you could also lean into is that it feels like a lot of other films, but I think overall that is its strength. It's something that you're gonna see a lot of familiarities to, but if you're just a fan of horror movies, you're probably just gonna have a really good time with this one. And so I think that's you to your point, Chris, it yeah, it's his strength, but it's also a weakness, but I think it's more of a strength.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:58

Yeah, I agree. I think that there is not to poke holes in my slash rating, but I think that there is a level, and with every horror movie, I think there's a level of suspension of reality that you have to have with some of the premise of the film. Um trying to explain away that your kid was in a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus because of human trafficking, I think was a very specific choice and something that I was having a little bit of a hard time like buying into fully, and I kind of had to like suspend belief for a moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:35

Or that they let this girl come home in the state that she was in. Come on.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:40

That's that was my gonna be my point. No, that my Colombian ass mother, if she saw me headbutting my grandma, if she saw me in that state, my mom would have been on speed dial with the hospital. You're gonna tell me that your kids' toenails are falling off, their skin is falling off, and you have not called a doctor once. So the movie overall 1000% worked for me. But I think that there were moments where you're just like, okay, we're we're just gonna ignore that a little bit and we're gonna move on because there were some like small, I guess, plot holes that we just needed to like gloss over a little bit, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:22

I'm there with you. I would like to offer that the cost of healthcare these days, it might have been cheaper to just cut the toenails at home.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:29

Just let her go.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:30

It's one thing I think to Sean's point, right? Like, nah, dog, this kid is not going home. We're not taking her back. We will St. Jude's Children's Hospital this week. We will go and stay in Egypt, like convalesce in Egypt.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:45

Talk to me about the plane ride to America. That's what I want to know. How did that plane trip go?

SPEAKER_04 1:37:52

Amazing, right? How did a like the passport stamp officers look at that little girl and be like, um, you need to turn around, right? She's going to bring a disease into the US. You can't actually bring her here. She is unwell and she's not allowed on the plane.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:09

No fucking way she's getting through TSA. She doesn't have pre-check. She doesn't have any of that nonsense. That's not happening. Rest in Egypt, sure, heal in Egypt, but when you get over here, I cannot imagine the amount of debt this family would go into, even to have one consultation with a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:30

My gosh. My gosh. Really, really ridiculous. Also, I'm just thinking of man, now I'm just thinking of all the things that I was thinking while watching this movie, and then I'm watching them like struggle to like slam this wheelchair up the stairs to bring Katie in the house. And I'm like, there's gotta be a better way to do this.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:49

For sure. Why, why was one of them not in front of her holding up the wheels and just lift, just lifting. It seems like such a bad time.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:57

Y'all have had three children. I know you have had to carry a stroller up a set of stairs. You have not figured out a better system by this point. I was so stressed to talk about stress during the movie. I was so stressed. I was like, bring the damn buy a bed for IKEA and put it downstairs at this point. This is getting ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:17

Things that we expected to happen and then didn't or paid off in a different way. We got the toenail ripping off the skin. I fully expected for her to fall out face forward down the stairs and like crunch her bones or something. Can't believe it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:33

Amazing. Oh, listen, there's a lot of really interesting things we can continue to talk about this film. I think what I I like about it is that there's a lot of things that you can go back to. It's worth a rewatch for sure. I personally want to see some kind of special edition where it kind of goes over the making of the film, including like creating some of the shots that they did, some of the scenes that they did, the creation of some of it with the some of the practical effects. I think this would be a really good special edition. Give me a nice Blu-ray set. Give me something that I can sink my teeth into.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:05

Yeah, I think that this is a really I like I mentioned, I watched this by myself. So I at and I had a really fun group. I had a really fun audience in the theater with me, which I feel like makes or breaks a movie sometimes. I would be really interested to like re-watch this with a group of friends that haven't seen the movie and like see their reactions to a lot of the, especially the gory elements. I yeah, I feel like a re-watch in the right setting with the right group of people would be really fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:36

I cannot wait to watch this movie again with the Evil Dead pipeline. So give me Evil Dead 2013, give me Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead Burns, Lee Cronin's the Mummy, and then the 2028 Mummy.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:52

Nice. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:53

Yeah, the pipeline is gonna be so fucking strong. But until we get there for now, there you have it, folks. Lee Cronin's the Mummy from 2026 Hazard Universal Slash. Now we certainly had a robust discussion, but it doesn't end here by any means.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:10

Yeah, if you want to find out how you can unwrap this podcast and go further than this episode, consider supporting the show. Visit patreon.com slash hacker slash. This is really where you can enjoy even more of the show, like digging into our ancient episodes with the crypt, bonus content with early access, extended episodes with our B-sides, movie nominations, and live shows.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:32

Thank you again, Christina, for joining us for these two episodes. Christina, if our audience wants to learn more about you and follow you along the way, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_04 1:41:41

You can find me at my main page in on Instagram and on TikTok at Chris and her closet, C-R-I-S and Her Closet. And if you want to find my secret, not so secret horror movie theme park, all things Halloween horror nights page, it's at Peckish at the park.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:59

We'll see you next time, folks. And remember, embalming fluid. It's like Botox for the dead.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:04

Good answer. You're gonna stay in my will.