Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: Decoded

 


Lee Cronin’s 2026 film The Mummy concerns an ancient Egyptian demon, the Nasmaranian, that has to be neutralized and contained through periodic re-mummifications in a series of innocent victims’ bodies. The story opens as an impending flood of the site of the demon’s burial threatens to disrupt its imprisonment, obligating its caretakers to find a new body and resting place for the otherworldly menace. Unfortunately, American TV news correspondent Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) happens to be stationed in Cairo with his family when the evilly sexy Magician (Hayat Kamille) sets her sights on Cannon’s daughter Katie (Emily Mitchell).

The Magician, appearing to Katie through a fence at the end of her family’s garden, tempts her with treats and eventually dupes her into accepting a nectarine from which a scarab beetle emerges and crawls into Katie’s mouth. Absconding with the incapacitated Katie to use her in the latest mummification ritual, the Magician sets in motion a years-long nightmare for the Cannon family. Relocating to New Mexico, the Cannons have never been able to learn what happened to their daughter – until eight years later, when Katie (now played by Natalie Grace) is discovered in an Egyptian sarcophagus in a catatonic state and ghastly physical condition. Bringing her home to the United States, the Cannons are eventually horrified to discover the nature of the otherworldly malevolence lurking inside their once-darling little girl.

Key to understanding the cultural significance of The Mummy is its point of inception in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, with the details of the Middle Eastern setting, the impending flood, the underground passage in which the mummy is housed, and the penetration of the fence through which the Magician preys upon Katie each pointing symbolically to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. The Palestinian resistance action and the consequent genocidal terror campaign conducted by the state of Israel were very recent developments when production of The Mummy was announced in June of 2024 [1]. By locating the horror’s point of origin in Egypt, site of the Jews’ putative captivity in antiquity, and featuring the element of abduction – recalling Hamas’s seizure of Israeli “hostages” as well as the plot of the 2008 neoconservative classic Taken – The Mummy performs a Zionist propaganda function in reviving the trope of the Arab world as a source of fanatical mysticism, subterfuge, and aggression. (The insect-ingestion aspect of the abduction arguably preys upon meme-induced conservative fears of globalist plans for coerced bug-eating, as well.)


Crucially, The Mummy is preoccupied with young people’s susceptibility to the Nasmaranian’s depredations. The rediscovered Katie, once ensconced in the Cannons’ New Mexico home, functions as a Trojan horse in gaining the trust of her mother (Laia Costa) and eventually establishing a corrupting influence over her brother (Shylo Molina) and sister (Billie Roy). Looming large in the headlines of the period during which The Mummy went into development were the anti-Zionist protests on university campuses across the United States. Significant in connection with this resonance is the Magician’s assistant, Layla Khalil (May Elghety), whose name combines those of Mahmoud Khalil, one of the leaders of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University in April of 2024, and Leila Khaled, a veteran of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and an advocate for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Additionally, the specter of rising anti-Semitism among young Americans comes across in the Cannon children’s game of classifying physiognomies as “rats” (i.e., Jews) or “frogs” (Alt-Righters, Groypers, or Gentiles). Maud Cannon, manifesting her older sister’s demonic influence – and demonstrating the racialist iconoclasm of the young – even insults her teacher as a “rat-faced cunt”. Order can only be restored when the parents come to terms with the subtextually anti-Semitic woke wickedness that infests their home and successfully exorcise it. Tellingly, this will require the aptly named Cannons to return to the Middle East to carry out a vigilante act of restorative justice – an outcome that psychologically models the neoconservative preference for military intervention.

Ironically, Irish actor Jack Reynor, who portrays Charlie Cannon, was one of the signatories to a 2025 pledge of the Film Workers for Palestine to refuse to collaborate with Israeli film institutions. “As filmmakers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognize the power of cinema to shape perceptions,” the statement reads: “In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.” [2] Realistically, a list of de facto “Israeli film institutions” should include Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions, which bankrolled Cronin’s crypto-Zionist film The Mummy. “Jason Blum is a film producer and co-founder of Blumhouse Productions who has advanced Zionist interests through public endorsements of ‘Israel’ and participation in events that legitimise the [Jewish] settler-colonial project, thereby helping to manufacture consent for the ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide inflicted upon Palestinians across Palestine,” summarizes Reverse Canary Mission:

Jason Blum also signed the “No Hostage Left Behind” open letter that thanked President Joe Biden for his handling of the hostage situation following October 2023. The letter aligned him with efforts to shield “Israel” from criticism while Biden continued to supply weapons and diplomatic cover that sustain the genocide in Palestine […]

These documented actions form a consistent pattern in which Jason Blum leverages his position in the entertainment industry to echo narratives that obscure the root causes of Palestinian resistance and affirm “Israel’s” “right to exist” on occupied territory. By signing letters that thank enablers of ethnic cleansing and by accepting honours at Zionist film festivals Jason Blum contributes to the cultural infrastructure that dehumanises Palestinians and perpetuates [Jewish] settler-colonial violence. [3]

Unfortunately, no exorcism of the demonic occupation of Hollywood appears to be forthcoming, tidy and happy endings being reserved for big screen fantasies.

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Endnotes

[1] D’Allesandro, Anthony. “Atomic Monster & Blumhouse Teaming with New Line for New Movie from Evil Dead Rise’s Lee Cronin; April 2026 Release Set”. Deadline (June 13, 2024): https://archive.ph/UVaHw

[2] Craft, Chloe. “Louisa Harland, Liam Cunningham and Jack Reynor Among Over 1,800 Signatories on Film Workers for Palestine Pledge”. Hot Press (September 8, 2025): https://archive.ph/MwIXs

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20260611164047/https://www.reversecanarymission.org/person/jason-blum


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