Entertainment
New Version Of The Mummy Is Bad Parenting Wrapped In Vomit-Soaked Blasphemy
By Chris Sawin
| Published
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is not a remake of the 1999 version of The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser, but actually a reimagining of the 1932 film starring Boris Karloff. What’s interesting about the original 1932 version of The Mummy is that it was also reimagined for its four sequels, including a crossover with Abbott and Costello.
The new horror film is loaded with gross-out gore, extreme close-up shots, and is undeniably corny even when tension is meant to be high. The Cannon family is annoying as hell. Charlie (Jack Reynor, Midsommar) is a terrible parent. Katie (Natalie Grace) is abducted because he wasn’t watching her at the beginning of the film, and things get increasingly worse because he’s constantly off being dumb in the basement.
His wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), is a delusional twit. When things get bad, and Katie starts eating live scorpions, headbutting her grandmother in the face, breaking her nose, and having half of her leg ripped off because Larissa doesn’t know how to do a proper pedicure, Charlie gives her an out, stating, “Hey, maybe we should have Katie committed somewhere temporarily because we have no idea what the hell we’re doing, and your mom’s face can only take so much punishment.” Larissa takes it personally and thinks Charlie is implying that she can’t take care of her own daughter. He is, and she can’t.
The Cannons are living in this two-story, creaky-ass house with the loudest floorboards known to man. It also has this insane crawlspace with tiny doors leading to every room in the house, which is more convenient than Jason Voorhees digging tunnels to reach every room in the 2009 Friday the 13th remake. They also live with Carmen Santiago (Veronica Falcon), who is Larissa’s mother. Lee Cronin must have a thing against old people and/or grandparents, because this lady is destroyed throughout the film. Those coyotes that have been lurking around the house are eventually put to good use.
Parenting Is Never Easy
Somewhere in Egypt, a family is riding together in their car. The father sings with his three children as the mother quickly turns off the radio and complains that they’re all giving her a headache, then continues the car ride in silence. When they arrive home, their pet bird is left twitching in its cage in a pool of its own blood. The mother grabs the bird in her hand, blood dripping down her arm, and crushes it to death in front of her family.
The parents make their way to their basement, where they’ve been housing a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. They decide to crack it open and see if the mummy inside has awoken. As the sarcophagus becomes ajar, their torch is blown out, and a hook lifts the father off his feet, pierces through his jaw, and leaves him dangling in the air while choking on his last blood-soaked breath.
American Charlie Cannon has been working in Cairo as a reporter while trying to get a promotion in New York. As he secures his promotion, his daughter, Katie, disappears. She has been visiting a secret friend at the end of their garden for some time now, a woman who claims to be a magician (the mother from the beginning of the film). The magician (Hayat Kamille) kidnaps Katie, and the Cannon family is never the same.
Eight years later, a plane carrying the sarcophagus crashes. When it’s opened by the authorities, Katie is found inside, totally emaciated and wrapped up like a mummy. The rest of the film is spent trying to figure out what happened to her.
A Smell Only A Mother Can Love
What Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has going for it, other than its long-ass name, is that it is ridiculous. The dialogue reads like a bad soap opera, with Charlie being a mega-macho a-hole for no reason, and any sort of human interaction not feeling genuine in the slightest. The film is loaded with projectile vomit, and whatever is going on with Katie can’t decide whether it wants to blatantly rip off The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, or Poltergeist.
Charlie goes jogging out into a sandstorm to search for Katie after she disappears, and is barely fazed by the disastrous natural phenomenon. Katie violently and repeatedly shoves a fireplace poker into her foot after her mother’s attempt at cutting her toenails. Katie is also catatonic throughout most of the film. She breathes these raspy death rattle breaths, chomps her teeth, and gurgles these inhuman noises. She’s violent, unpredictable, with stinky, dried-out skin and long, black Frito fingernails, and can’t move on her own unless it’s convenient to the over-complicated story. She has a face, an appearance, and a smell only a mother can love, apparently.
Before Katie disappeared, the Cannons were expecting another baby. When Katie returns, she has a sister named Maud (Billie Roy). Maud starts off as this kind of cute, harmless kid who turns into an absolute hellion. What she does with teeth is disgusting. The funeral reception sequence, which is where Maud’s tooth obsession culminates, may be the most nauseating and outrageous scene in the film.
Evil Dead Rise was written and directed by Lee Cronin in 2023. His experience of dabbling in a Sam Raimi-created franchise must have left its mark because Lee Cronin’s The Mummy remorsely borrows from Raimi’s work at every opportunity. The film is over two hours long and would be nothing without its reliance on nasty gore. The musical score sounds like a herd of stampeding elephants and viciously assaults your eardrums constantly.
Miserable And Excessive
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy isn’t scary or memorable; it’s raunchy exploitation and over-orchestrated expired cheese. It is a horror film that reeks of nothing but ridiculousness. The sad part is there’s a decent enough concept buried somewhere within this vomit-drenched monstrosity and a killer ambiance that is borderline spine-tingling.
But there’s nothing original here other than influence overkill. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is like dunking a grenade in a bucket of gasoline, throwing that grenade in a clown car, and witnessing an entire circus melt, crackle, and explode as you try to piss to put it out. It is miserably and excessively grotesque.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy barfs its way into theaters on April 17.
Entertainment
Using Claude Fable 5 means your data will be collected. It’s not optional.
Anthropic just released its most powerful public model yet — Claude Fable 5. However, along with the model’s release, the AI giant also made a significant update to its data retention policies.
Fable 5 was released to the public on Tuesday. Fable 5 is a “safe for general use” version of Anthropic’s most powerful model, Mythos, which has been restricted from public use due to its potentially dangerous cybersecurity capabilities. Anthropic created a set of safety guardrails for Fable 5, and its benchmarks blow away much of the competition, per Anthropic.
But it looks like Anthropic has also blown away its data retention policies for Fable 5.
“To ensure we’re responsibly deploying Mythos-class models, we are requiring limited data retention and review as part of our safety work,” reads an update on Anthropic’s official Claude support page. “Prompts submitted to, and outputs generated by, Mythos-class models are retained for 30 days for trust and safety purposes, on every platform where these models are offered.”
The update was first noticed by Jun Park, the CEO of AI training company hillclimb.
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“New policy from Anthropic: if you use Fable/Mythos, they collect your data. No exceptions. Not even for enterprise partners,” Park posted on X.
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This change is significant for Anthropic’s enterprise and API customers, says Jessica Eaves Mathews, a lawyer who specializes in copyright, trademark, and AI law.
In a post on Mathews’ Substack (as highlighted by CyberNews), the lawyer explains how Anthropic already retains user data for 30 days under its free and paid consumer plans. However, Matthews says this change nullifies part of any agreement Anthropic has with its enterprise and API partners.
“Every other Claude model available through the API, including Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6, and Haiku 4.5, can operate under Zero Data Retention (ZDR) agreements,” Mathews writes. “Fable 5 cannot. If your organization previously had a ZDR agreement with Anthropic, that agreement does not apply to Fable 5 traffic. This is a policy change that overrides existing enterprise commitments for this specific model class.”
Mathews says that any organization that believed that their data would not be stored by Anthropic should know that there is now a “mandatory exception” for Fable 5 and all future Mythos models.
While Mythos-class models seem to be quite powerful, companies should know about the change in Anthropic’s data retention policies and make adjustments where necessary.
Entertainment
Tons of Fitbits are on sale ahead of Prime Day
Best early Prime Day Fitbit deals at a glance:
Amazon’s Prime Day sales event is right around the corner (I can’t believe it’s that time of year again!), and I’m genuinely shocked by the deals we’re seeing this early in the game.
Usually, Amazon doesn’t put Fitbits on sale until the very last minute, and then they’re gone. (And some years, they don’t go on sale at all.) But right now, we’re seeing all-time lows on select Fitbit models, including the Charge 6.
Here are the best early Prime Day Fitbit deals you can shop right now:
Best deal overall
$99.95
at Amazon
$159.95
Save $60.00
Why we like it
The Fitbit Charge 6 isn’t the newest Fitbit on the market, but it still has (almost) everything you’d need in a smart wearable. (I say almost because the Fitbit Charge 6 doesn’t have an altimeter, but if you’re not a trail runner, this probably isn’t a deal breaker.)
The Charge 6 tracks your calories, steps, sleep, heart rate, and more. It also has built-in GPS, 40+ exercise modes, a seven-day battery life, and includes a three-month Google Health Premium (formerly Fitbit Premium) membership. Once the three months are up, you’ll need to either cancel or renew for $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually.
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Right now, you can get the Fitbit Charge 6 for $99.95 at Amazon. This is the lowest price we’ve tracked on this model since its release in 2023.
Best runner-up deal
Why we like it
If you’re willing to spend a little bit more, the Fitbit Versa 4 is on sale for $149.95. This isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen (it was $104.96 in April 2024), but it’s still a pretty good deal.
Unlike the Charge 6, the Versa 4 has an altimeter and Bluetooth wrist calling. So, if you’re looking for a wearable that acts more like a smartwatch, the Versa 4 might be the better buy. That said, it doesn’t have the more “serious” health sensor that the Charge 6 does (e.g., ECG and EDA).
The Versa 4 also comes with three months of Google Health Premium.
Best budget deal
$79.95
at Walmart
$89.95
Save $10
Why we like it
If you’re just looking for something that’s affordable and efficient, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is your best option at $79.95.
It’s a no-frills fitness tracker that’ll give you the basic features you need to stay on top of your health. It can track your heart rate, steps, and stress levels. (It also offers menstrual health tracking, which is nice.)
You’ll also get 10 full days of battery life and, like the other models mentioned above, three free months of Google Health Premium.
Entertainment
20+ book deals Im sending to the group chat before Prime Day even begins
Table of Contents
The best early Prime Day book deals at a glance:
It’s nearly Amazon Prime Day, which officially runs from June 23 through 26, but if you don’t feel like waiting, there’s already plenty of live deals to shop.
Besides offering three free months of both Kindle Unlimited and Audible to new subscribers, Amazon also has some pretty great discounts on books themselves. I’m not usually one to recommend purchasing physical books via Amazon (support local book stores!), but it’s pretty hard to pass up a 50% price drop on a book you’ve had on your TBR.
Amazon Editors just dropped the 20 best books of 2026 (so far) — find out what made the list
I’m tracking some of the best deals on physical books and e-books at Amazon ahead of the official Prime Day kick off, but remember to check back for more once things start ramping up.
Best early Prime Day hardcover book deal
$14.67
at Amazon
$30
Save $15.33
with on-page coupon
Why we like it
Named one of the best books of 2026 so far by Amazon Book Editors, Crux is an “exhilarating, tender novel about an unlikely friendship forged through a shared love of rock climbing,” according to Amazon Editor Abby Abell. Thanks to an on-page coupon at Amazon, you can add the hardcover version to your home library for less than half its usual cost.
More hardcover book deals
Best early Prime Day paperback book deal
$7.50
at Amazon
$19.95
Save $12.45
Why we like it
A classic trope of two abducted girls, only one returns and one doesn’t, The Girl Who Was Taken is a psychological thriller by Charlie Donlea where nothing is as it seems. Typically around $20, you can pick up the paperback version for only $7.50 at Amazon ahead of Prime Day. That’s just a few cents away from its lowest price ever.
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More paperback book deals
Best early Prime Day Kindle book deal
$2.99
at Amazon
$18.99
Save $16.00
Why we like it
I highly recommend grabbing this twisty psychological thriller from internationally best-selling author Steve Cavanagh while the Kindle version is only $2.99. Kill For Me Kill For You follows two women seeking revenge against the men who killed their daughters. Over drinks one night, they decide to swap murders, but things don’t go exactly as planned.
More Kindle book deals
Hot Jac Caglianone, Royals out to halt Rangers' quest for .500
Alec Burleson, Cards look to extend streaks vs. Mets
