Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

I get it. I understand why this has been titled Lee Cronin's The Mummy. You don't want to risk confusing people who are eagerly awaiting another adventure with Brendan Fraser and co. You also don't want to risk confusing people (okay person . . . okay . . . me) who might be thinking that one day they'll secretly try to get another Dark Universe movie made, with or without Tom Cruise in a lead role. I'm telling you, rewatch that movie and you may eventually see that it's not as bad as the reviews and box office might have you believe. But I digress. The point I was making was that I won't be insulting to Lee Cronin's The Mummy because of the title. I will, however, be insulting to it because of so many other things in the film.

This is a horrible and joyless mess of a film, seemingly helmed by someone who doesn't really seem interested in the main essence of the monster announced in the title. It's all about Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa), a couple who go through the pain of having one of their children snatched away from them. Things look up slightly when she's found again years later though, but she's been seriously traumatised. And mummified. What can be done to help her get back to normality? Is she the same soul that she was when abducted years ago? 

As so many others have already said, this is Lee Cronin filtering some mummy movie ideas through the filter of an Evil Dead movie. I wouldn't have minded that if it had been as much fun as that blend suggests. It's not. the 134-minute runtime feels like a real slog, especially throughout the first half of the movie, and there's not enough in the third act to make up for how draining the rest of it is. 

Reynor and Costa are both fine in their roles, although both have been MUCH better in a number of other features. Natalie Grace works well as young Katie, mostly buried under a lot of makeup that helps her to look quite scary and pained. That's really all I have to say. That's not the extent of the cast, but nobody else gets to make a strong enough impression. There's a determined detective (May Calamawy), but she feels as if she's only coming in and out of the film to ensure the main characters get to hear enough exposition. There are other children (played by Shylo Molina and Billie Roy), but they never feel quite as endangered as they could be, considering they are siblings set to be manipulated by their transformed sister. And there are one or two other characters I was waiting to see meet some kind of nasty end. It's a shame that Hayat Kamille isn't used more, because her character (The Magician) felt like someone actually interesting enough to want to spend some more time with.

There's very little else to say about this. It's visually ugly, for the most part, I have already forgotten the score by Stephen McKeon (honestly, it might have been alright, but my mood was so soured by everything else that I was battling against some kind of wall of rage-induced white noise), and someone should have had the sense to scrap everything quite early on and restart from scratch.

I would never claim to be the biggest fan of Mummy movies at any time, they're my least favourite of the big classic monsters, but this turgid pile is already a strong contender for one of the worst cinematic releases of 2026, and also sits very low in any ranked list of Mummy movies, not counting the efforts that were made with a tenth of this budget. 

3/10

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Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Here we go again, a decade after the last Evil Dead movie (one I have rated slightly higher after repeat viewings), a little while after the very enjoyable Ash Vs. Evil Dead TV show, and over forty years until this franchise was started with The Evil Dead. Writer-director Lee Cronin has now been entrusted with the property, and he delivers a barnstorming selection of blood-soaked thrills and escalating tension that allows this film to compare favourably to anything that preceded it, which is quite an achievement.

Alyssa Sutherland plays Ellie, mother to Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), Danny (Morgan Davies), and Kassie (the youngest of the three, played by Nell Fisher). This family unit aren't having the best time of things, and they will need to move to a new home soon, their apartment building having been scheduled for demolition in the near future. Ellie's sister, Beth (Lily Sullivan), finds out about this when she pays a surprise visit. When the kids are sent out to pick up a pizza, an earthquake strikes, which opens up a hole that Danny decides to explore, finding a book that probably shouldn't be opened, as well as some very special vinyl records. One thing leads to another, and before you can say "kanda, estrata, kandos", well . . . a voice starts saying "kanda, estrata, kandos", and things start to get very painful and bloody for those targeted by demonic forces. It all starts with Ellie, but nobody is safe, either from the threat of death or the threat of possession.

I’ve already seen a lot of love for Evil Dead Rise, but I have seen just as much criticism of it. Most of the criticism amounts to one or two main complaints; it doesn’t feel like an Evil Dead movie, and there’s no Ash. Not to invalidate the opinions of people who left their screening of this full of anger and disappointment, but it sure felt like an Evil Dead movie to me. You get great imagery throughout, a Necronomicon being the cause of all the troubles, and demonic entities that are as playful as they are deadly. The fact that there is no Ash is a) untrue (find him in a very well-hidden cameo), and b) neither here nor there. I love Bruce Campbell as much as most horror fans, but the franchise has figured out a way to ensure that it wasn’t just tied to one character, and especially one character that nobody would want to see recast. 

All you will find in this review is love for this film. I had a blast with it, from the opening sequence (including a fun gag, and some nastiness that we then cut away from after one of the best opening title cards in modern cinema) to the third act that covers every part of the screen with the most amount of fake blood scene since, well, Evil Dead. Cronin has brilliant instincts for his treatment of the material, and only stumbles when trying to shoehorn in some familiar soundbite from the previous movies, and he accompanies the wild and gory visuals with an audio mix that often becomes genuinely uncomfortable and distressing at times. There are moments here in which the sound builds and builds and builds in a way that you feel will either break your brain or make you vomit, and I mean this as a compliment (but also a warning to prepare yourself - this can feel like an assault on your senses, which is another aspect that helps it feel very much like an Evil Dead film).

And as for those being put through the necronomiwringer, I liked everyone onscreen. Sutherland generally had the most fun, being turned before anyone else and being the main threat in the movie, but Sullivan is easy to root for in the face of increasing danger. Echols and Davies are also very good, typical teens who become believably terrified as everything starts to spiral into insanity, but not only does Fisher get to be an amusingly quirky pre-teen, she also reminded me of Heather O’Rourke’s character in the Poltergeist movies. Whether deliberate or not, there’s one shot near the very end of the film that felt like an attempt to replicate a moment in that horror classic. A few others get dragged into the horror, providing extra potential souls to be swallowed, but the two who make the strongest impressions are played by Jayden Daniels and Mark Mitchinson, although nobody here drops the ball.

Despite the criticisms I have seen from others, I would highly recommend this to fans of the franchise. It has the camerawork you expect, an impressive array of special effects, some familiar weaponry, and moments to make most people genuinely wince and/or laugh at the onscreen insanity. If Cronin has plans for another one or two instalments then I will be keen to see what he gives us next. This film certainly shows that Sam Raimi’s faith in him was not misplaced, and moving the terror away from that cabin in the woods, but still keeping people trapped in one main location, ends up working even better than I hoped it would.

Go get some.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Hole In The Ground (2019)

An acclaimed debut from director Lee Cronin, who also co-wrote the script with Stephen Shields, The Hole In The Ground is a well-made little horror movie with a couple of good ideas. It's just a shame that it didn't really work for me, especially during moments that felt a bit too vague, and in a way that seemed like a cop out as opposed to an interesting artistic choice, while so many other moments left no room for anything ambiguous.

Seána Kerslake is Sarah O'Neill, a single mother with her son, Chris (James Quinn Markey). The two have recently moved into a fairly isolated house in the midst of some woods, of course, and things get a bit strange as Sarah starts to suspect Chris of changing somehow. This idea firms up in her mind after she discovers the backstory to a local woman, Noreen (Katie Outinen), who some say killed her young son when she became convinced that he had been turned into a demonic entity.

Although this is an original horror, always something worth celebrating among the selection of remakes, reboots, and sequels, The Hole In The Ground doesn't actually FEEL very original. All of the component parts will be very familiar to genre fans, and some aspects are almost laughable. Let me pick one main example, this could have felt even more unique, and interesting, if set in a town environment. Need a massive sinkhole for the child to discover? Have him clambering over a fence and into an abandoned building site. There. Anyone who wants to remake this movie in about twenty years can make that change, at least, and thank me in the credits.

Cronin knows what he's doing, the technical side of things is generally quite perfect (including the dreary colour palette), but the script disappoints, with character development not as good as it could be and the tendency to weave between over- and under-explaining things.

Kerslake does as well as she can in the lead role. She's a good actress, and Markey works well alongside her. Both are hampered by the motions they have to go through as the plot plays out. Outinen does well as a female version of Crazy Ralph - "you're doooooooomed" - and James Cosmo is excellent as her caring husband, but there aren't enough other strong supporting players given a chance to lift things up slightly.

I can't call this a bad movie. It isn't, even though it didn't work for me as well as it seems to have worked for many others. Everyone involved knows what they're doing, to a degree, and it's good to see some praise being given to something trying to be a bit different from the many films trying to capture that Wan-iverse vibe. I just can't call it a good movie either. None of it worked for me, not when it came to the horror movie moments. I was never tense, never scared, never really bothered by where things were going. And the final scene just had me rolling my eyes, especially when viewers know that there's absolutely no need for it.

5/10

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Prime Time: Minutes Past Midnight (2016)

Remember when horror anthologies were made by a group of people wanting to deliver a shared vision allowing for more creative freedom than a feature would allow? Me too. I like those horror anthologies. But it seems more and more common nowadays to find that a horror anthology is made up of curated short films. There is a good and bad side to this approach. On the one hand, you get to enjoy an assortment of short films that you woulds most likely have otherwise missed (aside from festival programmes, it's often hard to discover short films "in the wild). On the other hand, the whole thing can feel a bit disjointed, and almost like a disservice to the better films that can be sandwiched between lesser fare.

Minutes Past Midnight is made up of the following tales; Never Tear Us Apart, Awake, Crazy For You, The Mill At Calder's End, Roid Rage, Feeder, Timothy, Ghost Train, and Horrific. Nine tales. Four of those tales are very good, one is visually gorgeous and atmospheric, but lacking a certain something, and the others range from decidedly average to absolutely awful (Roid Rage is the worst of the lot).

Having listed those titles, and mentioned there quality levels, I think it is worth mentioning that there was only the one that I really despised. That's a good ratio for any modern horror anthology movie, and especially good when it is made up of many names who may be less familiar to film fans. Lee Cronin is someone you may know by now, and Ghost Train is a nice display of his talent. James Moran has fun with his short tale, Crazy For You. But those were the only two main names I recognised, although I had seen Never Tear Us Apart before, which helped me to relax as soon as the movie began, knowing I would enjoy at least one of these tales.

The acting throughout is generally good, with Roid Rage once again being the rare exception (I am sorry to harp on about it, but it REALLY stinks), but highlights include both Hannah Tointon and an uncharacteristically murderous Arthur Darvill in Crazy For You, the impressive voice work in The Mill At Calder's End, and an entertainingly unfazed child watching some carnage unfold before him in Timothy.

Despite the fact that none of these shorts benefit from any stylish link, the smallest touch of creating closing credits for each one in a similar style as a clock hand moves forward is enough to make this feel like something that has been handled with a bit more care than some.

Just over an hour and a half, and with none of the shorts outstaying their welcome (except you, Roid Rage, except you *shakes fist in the middle of empty room), Minutes Past Midnight is a decent option if you're wanting some light horror entertainment that's a few steps removed from all of the more mainstream options.

6/10

You can buy the DVD here.
Americans can buy that same DVD, or pay a crazy amount for the blu.