In a Nutshell
The demonic nun Valak last seen in the Conjuring 2 gets her own solo outing as she stalks the darkened corridors of a Romanian convent.
[imdb]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5814060/[/imdb]
Review
In preparation for watching The Nun I looked back at my own review of Annabelle: Creation, the last instalment in Warner Bros. Conjuring universe and to be honest you could pretty much copy and paste my review for that movie and use it here.
I’m not saying that because I’m smugly confident about my writing or anything like that, believe me, I’m really not! I say it because Corin Hardy’s film has all the same bad habits (sorry, so sorry) as David F. Sandberg’s feature last year.
Promising to be the darkest chapter within the Conjuring Universe, Hardy’s film gives Valak, the demonic Nun last seen in the Conjuring 2 her own solo outing. Despite its tagline’s promise of serving up something dark and sinister, Hardy’s film has probably served up the series’ weakest instalment to date.
For all its stylish visuals and Hammer Horror-Esque trappings, my central problem with the film is that it just feels so soulless, now with a feature featuring a demonic entity that should really be a good thing, but it’s not! What’s been served up here is an empty husk of a movie, one that features boring, clichéd characters jumping from jump scare to jump scare.
A Pale Imitation of Wan’s Original
Now I’ll admit I have a big soft spot for the first Conjuring movie and even its deeply flawed sequel, but those were two films made by a James Wan, a director I really like. But they were HIS films, shot with HIS trademark style, he still might be a producer on these spin-off movies, but they seem determined to cling to his style like a wet blanket and that samey, samey approach is a real bug bearer for me.
When you’ve got directors like Sandberg and Hardy, filmmakers who know what they’re doing within the horror genre why don’t you give them the freedom to stamp their own style on these films? We’re now five films into The Conjuring Universe and the ‘scare factor’ of films that rely on cheap parlour tricks and jump scares has run its course.
The Conjuring films have been one of the few box-office successes for studios hoping to replicate the success of Marvel’s Studios expanded Avengers universe, but even Marvel have realized they needed to freshen things up to stop their product from becoming stale. They’ve brought in interesting filmmakers like Taika Waititi and given them much freer rein to stamp their own style onto their movies. Maybe that’s what needs to happen here!
There also needs to be a greater importance placed on producing better screenplays, because let’s be honest they’ve been pretty terrible. They’re formulaic and cliché-laden, stealing ideas from other films and lazily rehashing them throughout their jump scare laden runtimes. Even the much-heralded jump scare within The Nun, already spoiled by the movie’s marketing campaign is just a blatant rip-off of the standout sequence from William Peter Blatty’s criminally underrated Exorcist III.
You Can’t Make a Good Movie With a Bad Script
As ‘Gorgeous’ George Clooney once said: “It’s possible to make a bad movie from a good script, but it’s impossible to make a good movie from a bad script.”
There’s nothing for the films three leads, Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga and Jonas Bloquet to work with: Bichir’s ‘miracle hunting’ Father Burke is a troubled priest with a shameful past, Farmiga’s Sister Irene is struggling to decide whether she should take her final vows and Jonas Bloquet’s character Frenchie is….well he’s French Canadian and that’s pretty much it.
Rather than explore any of these plot strands with any real conviction, the writers merely use them as an excuse to put each character through one jump scare laden set-piece after another. The cynic in me asks why they would want to flesh them out when they can just use these elements for another spin-off movie. Trust me The Nun lays the foundations for future sequels/prequels instalments with the series and not just for Valak, but some of the new characters too.
When you look at a film like The Exorcist, or even a more recent example like Hereditary and compare them to a film like The Nun you can see where its central problems lie. There’s simply nothing of substance or depth to really get your teeth into. When you don’t care about the characters onscreen, why would you be bothered when nasty, horrible things start to happen to them onscreen?
An Empty Husk of a Film
Yes the The Exorcist had a young girl possessed by a demon, but it was also a film that dealt with Jason Miller’s Father Karras rediscovering his faith along the way. For all its ‘culty madness’ Hereditary explored how a daughter’s poisonous relationship with her recently deceased mother had impacted on her relationship with her own childen.
There’ simply nun of that here (sorry, so sorry) but maybe I’m the bigger fool for hoping there would be anything like that within this ghost train of a movie. It’s a shame when you consider there’s a central character struggling to decide whether she should commit to a life in the church, all whilst she’s being stalked by a demonic entity dressed as a nun throughout a spooky Romanian convent.
Okay so I know its bit of a stretch, but there could’ve been something there worth exploring, maybe it was and these scenes got left on the cutting room floor. Sadly we’ll never know!
Much like I said about Annabelle: Creation when you take away the most interesting aspect of the Conjuring franchise, namely Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s Ed and Lorraine Warren (although they do briefly appear in flashback sequences that bookend this feature) you’re left with a film that features some unscary things happening to people you just don’t care about.
Verdict
I’m not a fan, The Nun is a pretty boring horror film that just isn’t that scary! As someone who loves Horror cinema, I really want these movies to be so much better!
