Lee Cronin and James Wan Talk Bringing Authenticity to ‘The Mummy’

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy re-imagines the iconic monster through a more intimate kind of horror, trading spectacle for a story rooted in grief, guilt, and family trauma. In our interview with Cronin, along with producers James Wan and Jason Blum, we talk about reshaping the legend into something more domestic, unsettling, and emotionally grounded.

When young Katie Cannon (Natalie Grace) disappears after her family relocates to Cairo, the loss leaves her parents, Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Laurie (Laia Costa), shattered. Years later, Katie is found alive, but the child who returns is deeply traumatized and clearly not the same. What begins as a miracle reunion soon gives way to something far more disturbing, as grief, blame, and buried horrors resurface inside the home.

When asked jokingly whether he and James Wan have something against families, Wan, whose experience with tormenting families ranges from Insidious to the Conjuring to even Aquaman to a certain extent, explained that the point is to build “family dynamics that we care about” so that when those characters are tormented, “you as an audience will feel sympathy for them.” Cronin, whose family tormenting started with Evil Dead Rise, echoed that idea, describing family as “something we can all identify with” and “a very, very powerful construct of our lives.”

Cronin framed the monster’s physical deterioration as central to the film’s emotional design, saying he needed to “take this monster out of the box” and “find a look that could deconstruct.” As Katie’s condition worsens and “this thing gets stronger,” the film’s body horror begins to play less like a simple supernatural reveal and more like a family confronting something that feels terrifyingly close to illness. Wan added that the challenge was how to “bring this character literally into the daylight, but keep her scary as the movie progresses” and that there are “layers.” to the character.

For Cronin, authenticity came through both personal familiarity and collaboration. While his Irish Catholic upbringing gave him “a good underpinning of understanding” of the film’s religious side, he said grounding its Egyptian elements meant “actually working with people that were from that world” and leaning on cast members for everyday cultural details that would make the world feel lived in. That meant having conversations with the cast members about sodas or pop song. “I think just questioning everything is how you put your best foot forward and be as authentic as you as you can be,” he said.