Editorials
‘The Mummy’ is About Halfway to Recoup
I don’t really like reporting on box office numbers because they’re arbitrary and impossible to corroborate. In fact, if reporting news is supposed to be factual, box office numbers are about as “fake news” as real news gets. Any writer who claims to have a firm grasp on them is lying, but we can at least make educated guesses based on our knowledge of how the studio system works. Yesterday I talked a bit about 47 Meters Down‘s theatrical opening specifically because I wanted to make sure that people understood that it was a successful release. Depending on how one looks at the results, it could have been deemed a failure. It wasn’t. The Mummy, however, is an interesting one because of the various hit pieces being taken out on Tom Cruise, not to mention the film flopping here in the States.
With a reported budget of $125M (although reports peg it more around $200M), The Mummy closed this weekend with an estimated $56M take. That’s devastating. To put it in perspective, adding in marketing spend, it looks like the film will need to gross at the very least $600M to break even. The Mummy won’t even cross $100M domestically, while Wonder Woman is on her way to $400M. Sure, they aren’t one in the same but The Mummy is supposed to be the beginning of Universal’s “Dark Universe”, which is supposed to be a horror take on DC and Marvel’s Cinematic Universes. With Cruise’s name failing to make an impact, the future looks rocky at best.
[Related] The Mummy Director Isn’t Making Movies for Critics
But as I reported before, the international numbers could be the saving grace. While there’s still a long way to go, as of this writing the worldwide estimate is close to topping $300M, which is about halfway to its target. It’s still early for the film but the strong international openings suggest it could have some legs.
It’s unclear where Universal Pictures executives heads are at with the film. Are they 100% committed to The Bride of Frankenstein or is the entire Dark Universe’s future riding on the success of The Mummy? Even if the film were to break even, you have to wonder what the ripple effect would after such a disastrous release. Will they revise their strategy? Change budgets? Rework scripts? Pull the plug altogether? We’ll be keeping an eye on everything because this hugely impacts our beloved genre’s future.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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