For a whole generation of moviegoers, if not two, the “Mummy” franchise began in 1999 with Stephen Sommers’ rollicking blockbuster starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. That action-adventure film’s tone couldn’t have been further from that of Karl Freund’s original 1932 horror classic top-lined by Boris Karloff, which bummed me out because that’s “The Mummy” I grew up on, and, darn it, I prefer a scary Imhotep!

Then, in 2017, Alex Kurtzman delivered the disappointing “The Mummy,” which is best known for a) the accidental release of a trailer missing most of its audio, and b) launching the DOA “Dark Universe” franchise. Unfortunately, the movie itself was never quite as inadvertently entertaining.

So, when producers James Wan and Jason Blum announced plans to make a legitimately scary “The Mummy,” horror lovers rejoiced. Genre fans were particularly enthusiastic over their choice of writer/director: Lee Cronin. Though still early in his career, his first two features, “The Hole in the Ground” and “Evil Dead Rise,” established him as one of the most promising directors in horror. His romp in the Sam Raimi sandbox was a great, big, goopy delight, one that undid the damage caused by Fede Álvarez’s excessively grim “Evil Dead.” Cronin’s film was fun, funny, and ferociously gory.

The only problem with steering “The Mummy” back into straight-up horror was that many moviegoers would assume it’s a remake of Sommers’ film. As such, Wan and Blum retitled it “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.” This introduced a new problem in that Cronin, prior to receiving a possessory title credit, was completely unknown outside of horror fandom. And while the film performed quite well at the box office (making over four times its $22 million budget), it’s truly blowing up on HBO Max, where it’s currently the top ranked movie (via FlixPatrol).

With his name in the title, Lee Cronin must’ve wrested the final cut or something close to it from James Wan and Jason Blum. “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” runs a punishingly long 133 minutes. That said, I’m not sure some judicious trimming would’ve fixed the film.

Jack Reynor and Laia Costa star as a married couple whose eldest daughter is kidnapped by a mysterious woman in Cairo. Eight years later, the daughter returns, but she’s a badly damaged young woman who self-harms in a strangely ritualistic way. It soon becomes clear that she is possessed, which is when Cronin kicks the body horror into high gear in a way that more closely recalls Fede Álvarez’s “Evil Dead” than anything else. Cronin’s sense of humor isn’t entirely absent here, but the length saps the life out of the movie.

Still, this is a deeply personal movie for Cronin, who was working through the grief of his mother’s death. There are some intense emotions in “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” but it too often feels like an addled riff on “The Exorcist.” Cronin’s talent is evident throughout, but the script just refuses to come together. If you dug Cronin’s previous two movies, though, this is absolutely worth watching. It’s an interesting failure from a director who can, and presumably will, bounce back with his next feature.