The Mummy Movies, Ranked

From Boris Karloff’s Mummy to the ill-conceived Dark Universe in 2017, the horror franchise hit several highs and lows, but audiences keep coming back for more. With a new Mummy movie in 2026 from Lee Cronin and a new sequel to the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies coming, the legacy of the best Mummy movies remains hit-and-miss.

Despite this, the Mummy has been around for almost a century, with films focusing on him as a horror monster, as part of a slapstick comedy, and then years later as a villain of a big-budget action movie. The Mummy also led to what ended up being a failed cinematic universe when Tom Cruise’s attempt at reviving the monster was a box office bomb.

That said, each generation of Mummy movies brought something different than what came before. The best of these had great CGI or practical effects, great acting, and quality storytelling. The worst of the movies repeated what came before, while bringing nothing new, or had plot holes and disappointing CGI effects that took viewers out of the movie completely.

In 2026, Lee Cronin helped bring back the Mummy, but it was an interesting attempt since it looked a lot more like what Cronin did in his Evil Dead Rise movies than anything from a Mummy movie. It was an interesting change of pace. However, with a new Brendan Fraser Mummy movie coming, it didn’t deliver for fans as well as the studio might have hoped.

The best Mummy movies have a unique appeal for horror and adventure movie fans. From Egyptian mythology and ancient curses to the idea of forbidden love, the best of these films all lean into the mythology rather than just treating this iconic monster as a background prop.

The Mummy (2017)

Intended to launch Universal’s Dark Universe, a shared monster world comparable to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of Hollywood’s top stars signed on to help get things off to a good start. Tom Cruise took on the lead role, while Russell Crowe showed up as Dr. Jekyll, to tease the future of this new franchise.

However, The Mummy was a box office disaster, despite making $410 million worldwide. It was a major loss for the studio thanks to production and advertising costs. The Rotten Tomatoes score sits at a low 15%, and the audience score is also low, at 35%. These two things caused Universal to scrap plans for the shared universe.

The Mummy itself was the only bright spot, with Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) as a highlight. However, even she was underwritten and lacked enough presence to elevate this film. Even Brendan Fraser, who starred in a different Mummy movie, remarked that the film lacked the “fun and adventure” fans wanted from the franchise.

The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)

The Mummy’s Tomb was the 1942 sequel in the original Mummy franchise. This version of the Mummy had one of the best Golden Age horror stars playing the monster, with Lon Chaney Jr. taking on the role, replacing Tom Tyler, who was in the previous release. Replacing Tyler was a problem, as Chaney is great, but he lacked the physicality of the last two Mummy actors.

The biggest problem with this movie, and what makes it the worst of the entire original Mummy franchise, is that it uses too much recycled footage from The Mummy’s Hand, which was done to save money. However, fans of the franchise quickly recognized duplicate shots from the films, which were often jarring and repetitive.

This was also the point where the entire idea of the Mummy and his goals was getting repetitive, as every film had the Mummy looking for his lost love and having almost no other motivation. The one thing that makes this worth watching is that it is still part of Kharis’s story arc, but not up to the level of the early films.

The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor (2008)

Released in 2008, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor had a lot of things going against it when it was released in theaters. For one thing, Rachel Weisz left the franchise, and Mario Bello replaced her. While Bello is a great actress, it was a jarring change, with the replacement offering up a very different character than the first two movies.

Another problem was the fall of the CGI in the franchise, which seemed to get worse with each sequel and spin-off movie. However, it was changing things from Egypt to China that was the biggest audience divide, as a dragon emperor (Jet Li) replaced an Egyptian Mummy, and that went against the franchise’s beloved mythology.

The movie has a 12% Rotten Tomatoes score, which is lower than Tom Cruise’s The Mummy. However, this movie is slightly better, with Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong receiving praise for their performances, and Brendan Fraser is always great as Rick O’Connell. Despite that, this killed the franchise for almost a decade.

Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was a fantastic mash-up movie, with the comedy duo playing the comedy while Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolf-Man all played it straight. That film should have been the perfect conclusion to the main Universal Monsters franchise, although a few smaller films followed over the next few years.

One of those was the final movie that the comedy duo made for Universal, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. This was also the movie that bid a final farewell to the Universal Monster franchise. While Abbott and Costello were as great as ever, the monsters were dead in the water. The Mummy didn’t even show up until 20 minutes before the movie ended.

The slapstick humor was still on display, but the horror was almost completely absent. It received a mixed response from critics, who praised the look of the film, but dismissed the story and script. If anything, critics called it uninspired.

The Mummy’s Curse (1944)

The Mummy’s Curse was the final film in the Universal Horror Kharis series, the fourth release that ended this character’s story once and for all. However, what holds this down from the other sequels is that the story makes very little sense and offers nothing new, although the Mummy was still a creepy horror villain throughout.

The movie was also supposed to take place 25 years after the first movie, but nothing changed in the set pieces, and it looked almost the exact same as it did in the previous films. That said, it does get credit for making Kharis a lot more sympathetic than in the previous movies, as this is a lost love story without the malice of the other films.

It also has an ending that received a lot of praise from genre fans, and the people who followed Kharis through these four films. It might be one of the most satisfying endings of any horror movie from that era.

Lee Cronin’s Mummy (2026)

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has one problem that has many fans divided. It is called a Mummy movie, but it really has nothing to do with the Mummy, or the mythology surrounding the iconic horror monster. If anything, this movie shares more in common with the Evil Dead movies than the Mummy franchise.

That makes sense, as Lee Cronin previously directed Evil Dead Rise, and it seems he wanted to make a spiritual sequel to that movie rather than one based on the Egyptian mythology of the Mummy films. The story follows a young daughter who had been missing for eight years who was found with something seemingly possessing her body.

The movie has a 45% Rotten Tomatoes score, and while it isn’t technically a Mummy movie in anything but its name, it has been praised for its gore and visual flair. It remains middle of the road for the franchise, mostly because it is an original story with a fresh mythology that worked better than the Tom Cruise reinvention from a decade earlier.

The Mummy Returns (2001)

The Mummy Returns is still a fun watch thanks to Brendan Fraser’s return as Rick O’Connell and the incredible Arnold Vosloo as the Mummy. Fans were ready for it, and it ended up as the highest-grossing Mummy movie ever made, making $433 million worldwide. That made it financially more successful than the first film in that series.

However, what really holds this movie down is the lackluster CGI, where the filmmaker seemed to want to give the monsters a more video game look, which fell short on the big screen. The Scorpion King (Dwayne Johnson) looked especially terrible, with critics in later years labeling it an example of uncanny valley in movies.

However, even with the lesser CGI effects, the non-stop action and bigger battles made it a spectacle worth watching. It was all spectacle and less character-driven, which is why it made more money, but still doesn’t match the original in quality.

The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)

The Mummy’s Ghost was one of the better Mummy sequels from the Universal Monsters Golden Age lineup. This sees Lon Chaney Jr. back as the Mummy again, and he gets a lot more emotional range than he did in his first attempt at playing Kharis. If anything, he was visibly angry, frustrated, and also sad, making him a lot more interesting as a monster.

This movie also has one of the most surprising endings of the original Mummy movies, and that makes it stand out above many Universal Monster movies of the era, even beyond the ones featuring the Mummy. It is extremely short, at under one hour in length, and is mostly critically lauded, despite its more modest production values.

Even though this just tells the same story as the previous movies, it is at least a quick watch, with great acting, and that surprising ending, making it rank above many horror sequels of the 1940s. John Carradine also appears as the high priest Yousef Bey, an inspired casting choice for cult horror movie fans.

The Mummy’s Hand (1940)

The Mummy’s Hand is widely considered the best Mummy sequel in Universal Studio’s horror monster movies. These movies all followed Kharis, played in this film by Tom Tyler, and it moved the story away from the first movie’s Imhotep, and brought in the new Mummy who led the way for the next decade.

This was Tyler’s only performance as Kharis, as Lon Chaney Jr. replaced him in the next movie. However, it was Tyler that remains the creepiest version of this specific Mummy, and he delivered a performance that not even Chaney could match. This also changed things by adding some comedy to even out the scares.

While this was where Universal was really starting to cut the budget on its horror movies, the film was still a solid release and the lower budget never hurt it that much. This was also during a time when the Mummy mythology was still new and fresh, which hurt later movies that just copied the formula.

The Mummy (1932)

The best Mummy movie of all time likely depends on if a person prefers the horror or the adventure movies. For those who love the horror aspects, the best film would be the first. In 1932, Universal Studios released The Mummy, with Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) playing Imhotep. From the makeup to the performance, the Mummy doesn’t get much better.

This horror film was made based on real-life events, and specifically the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, and the fascination of the Egyptian curses. This took a little different turn from other Universal Horror movies, and it was more of a Gothic Romance, eclipsing the genre itself.

The Mummy has a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics praising its atmosphere, restraint, and Boris Karloff’s magnetic performance. It was only modestly successful when it was released, but its legacy remains untouched.