There’s this thing that seems to be happening with all the offshoots of The Conjuring movies and it’s not a very good thing. The movies, like Annabelle and this one, feel like they’re made in a factory, all the plastic parts assembled in the right places so that you have a functioning, walking talking toy, but there’s no soul there. Annabelle: Creation avoids this but it’s solely due to the personality of director David Sandberg (another example of this is the prequel to Ouija, by Mike Flanagan, Ouija: Origin of Evil), or maybe it was the writers, I dunno. What I do know is that these films are technically fine, they’re not drivel, but they’re certainly not anything to get excited about. Does The Nun measure up? Sadly, no, but it does try.
Father Burke (played by Demian Bichir with the same whispering tough guy gravitas we’ve seen a million times in these kinds of films—he whispers because he’s serious, dammit, and he has a haunted past) is sent by the Vatican to a small Romanian village to investigate the suicide of a nun. He is commissioned to take nun novice in training Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga who is great in this) for mysterious reasons known only to the Vatican. They team up with a local that goes by the name Frenchie and together they investigate what’s going on in the old covenant. Well, let’s just say that it’s “Gates of Hell” kind of stuff, and if they don’t seal the gate with the blood of Christ, the evil known as Valak will get into our world and that would be bad news for everyone. Of course, we already know Valak gets into this world because the movie is set in 1952 (if I’m remembering right) and the events of Conjuring 2 are yet to come but we know what happens, so…
Here’s some things I really liked about this movie:
I loved the setting. It reminded me of the Hammer Horror films with all the gothic trappings. The atmosphere these generate is pretty thick and enjoyable for an old guy like me. I loved the straightforwardness of the plot. It reminded me of the Italian horror films from the 70’s and early 80’s. It was ridiculous and made little sense but they just kept barreling forward, throwing horror at you left and right. There’s even a little nod towards City of the Living Dead. These two things would combine to make a terrific movie, but for some reason, the mix doesn’t gel, and everything turns out pretty flat. Which leads me to…
The things I did not like:
Everything involving the scares was pretty generic and telegraphed from a mile off. I was never once scared or even tense. Things just pretty much unfolded and I could enjoy some of it on a “This is a cool reference to such and such” level but not on an actual, visceral level. That’s a big failure in my book. The stakes were never that high and because we already knew Valak was going to get out somehow, well, that takes away a lot of the tension. Also, for a movie that was supposed to feature The Nun and be some sort of origin story, she sure gets pushed to the background a lot. I mean, this would be like making a Freddy movie and never really having him do much in it. She just sort of floats around and tries to be scary but it’s all street cred based on Conjuring 2, not what’s happening here.
I did like the way they folded this one into the Conjuring films, but really, that was five minutes of the film. The rest wasn’t a waste, but it certainly wasn’t a triumph. This is the kind of movie you can rent one day down the line or catch on cable or streaming. It’s not really worthy of a trip to the cinema. Maybe a matinee, which is how I caught it. Overall, it falls victim to the same problems that the other, peripheral films in this universe do. It’s fairly flat and doesn’t do much to rock the boat. Nun too fun, is my verdict.
2 Stars out of 4