‘The Nun’ // Film Review

*Watched on 12/28/18*

Most people should go into horror movies with no expectations because it’s hard trying to hope it turns out good or terrible. Most of the modern horror movies from the past few years turned out to be entertaining. Much like the original Conjuring But we now have another movie to continue on in this cinematic universe. Can The Nun be the darkest chapter yet as stated in the marketing?

What’s the Story: “When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together, they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of a demonic nun.”

There’s never a point into why we need these Conjuring spin-offs. Because outside James Wan’s first two movies that are really good, both Annabelle films (I didn’t think Annabelle: Creation was that good) aren’t worth the time to sit through. But the character was introduced to us back in The Conjuring 2, and it was a creepy aspect of the film where I don’t feel like it needed to explore its mythos. But does this origin story lead to a satisfying horror movie for everyone? Of course not. The fact that it’s another one of these spin-offs should easily say something.

Corin Hardy (The Hallow)’s direction, unfortunately, lacks anything thrilling. I’ll give him a bit of credit here since this is a well-directed horror flick. This has a good atmospheric feel throughout the setting that even I would get creeped out by if I was there. He does have a sense of making sequences feel tense until it gets ruined. Written by Gary Dauberman (It, the Annabelle films), the story wasn’t anything to get into when almost everything felt stilted without being scary. This is a story that might’ve been exciting to witness if it wasn’t becoming seamless with trying to get scares instead of telling a consistent story through.

There are some good performances that came from Demián Bichir as Father Burke and Taissa Farmiga, the younger sister of the franchise star Vera Farmiga, as Sister Irene, who’s still a nun in training. There’s also the local villager Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), who was the first person to discover the young nun. Bloquet is there to be the comic support that the movie kind of needs. But the problem is that I didn’t care about any of the characters and their dire fear of supernatural things that the demonic nun is doing almost every ten minutes. Unless it’s the Warrens or a family that’s in need of help from the Warrens, it doesn’t matter.

And with this being an origin story for the Nun or Valak, it came off as just uninteresting, to say the least. Some background information about this demon could’ve benefited for what could’ve been a scary movie, but there’s none of that here. I mean, nuns can be pretty scary in horror movies when you think about it.

If you were hoping The Nun was going to be scary, it shouldn’t come as a shocker to learn it wasn’t scary in the slightest. This consists of overdone jump scares camera tactics done before that become tiresome so many times. If you saw the trailer over a dozen times where it has a sequence of Sister Irene being followed by a nun, that scare doesn’t come through when you’re sitting there watching it. Your movie easily can be deemed “bad” when nothing is scary. Once you know how these spin-offs are gonna be played out, nothing comes off unpredictable. It’s just boring for being a 97 minutes long movie that uses tired clichés.

The Nun is well-made and shows to have a sense of good atmosphere, but this spin-off didn’t need to be made when nothing is scary, the story is weak, and exist to bank off the better films in this horror franchise. There was no point in making this but to continue on this franchise until the third Conjuring film comes out. Praying that it will be soon.

Grade: D+