The Nun is the prequel to Annabelle: Creation, which is the prequel to Annabelle, which is the prequel to The Conjuring and it tells the origin story of the villain in The Conjuring 2. In other words, this movie is here to answer questions that I never gave a fuck about asking. Despite the convoluted continuity and my general disinterest in this series, I thought that this movie could be entertaining because I’ve always found nuns to be creepy. My Great Aunt was a nun and I still vaguely remember making daytrips to her convent as a little kid and finding the whole place unsettling. Don’t get me wrong, they are the nicest fucking people in the world. I was just always uncomfortable there. Maybe it was the outfits or excessive use of stained glass. Anyway, I though that nuns were a strong and largely unused basis for a horror film. Unfortunately, I’m having nun of this.
We learn that Valak, the villain from The Conjuring 2, was unleashed from hell in a church in Romania in the 1950s. The death of a nun prompts Rome to send a priest (who specializes in supernatural shenanigans and should be driving the Mystery Machine) and a young, pre-vows nun to investigate. They arrive and walk around dark hallways for about 90 minutes. That’s largely it. One of my favorite horror movies from the 90s is Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and the writer of this movie is also a huge fucking fan of it because this movie steals the main plot device from that movie in an almost impressively brazen way. Remember the container of Christ’s blood from that movie and how it was used to fight demons? Remember how the hero uses it to kill the main demon at the end? Then congrats, you don’t need to see The Nun because you’ve already seen this shit in a better movie. And when I say it rips off things from Demon Knight, I mean fucking exactly. It’s a level of plagiarism that’s almost refreshing in its ballsiness.
I do have one nice thing to say about this move: It looks really nice. The sets and cinematography are straight out of an old Universal monster movie with much of the film set in foggy graveyards, moldy crypts and dusty old castles. The ambiance is classic horror stuff, the kind of thing that evokes thoughts of Halloween night. If asked to envision a classic horror environment from a 50s movie (something like Dracula or The Wolf Man), I would picture something very close to the sets of this film.
Unfortunately, not much happens on those sets. I feel like somebody wanted to make a horror movie around a creepy image of a nun in an old castle hallway, but then forgot to write an actual plot. Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone died in this movie after the first 2 minutes. I’m not positive about that, but I can’t remember anything. Creepy images lose their appeal after enough time spent waiting for something to actually fucking happen. We spend the vast majority of the film with two characters (plus occasional appearances by a comic-relief character that only exists for that purpose), so we know that nobody is going to die from the sheer numbers involved. The entire film is just eerie shots of nuns and a lot of jump scares. And I mean a fucking lot of jump scares. This movie may have the highest jump-scare-per-minute ratio that I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. Problem is that I hate it when films rely on jump scares. They are a cheap tactic. I could sneak up on you and startle you with an airhorn; that doesn’t make me Alfred fucking Hitchcock. But in a film where quite literally nothing substantial happens for much of their runtime, I guess they had to wake up the audience with something.
The performances are generally fine, but I do need to comment on the bizarre casting of Taissa Farmiga as the lead character. Taissa is a fine actress and does a good job. The problem is that she’s the younger sister of Vera Farmiga, the star of The Conjuring movies, and they look exactly alike. They are 21 years separated, but their facial features are damn near identical. So I spent the whole movie waiting for some kind of connection. This character must be a relative of The Conjuring character or something. Nope. Nothing. Why the fuck would you do that? Why cause such unnecessary confusion? Was there no other actress on the goddamn planet that would take this role? That’s like casting Michael Douglas in a prequel to a movie starring Kirk Douglas and making them completely unrelated characters. I don’t buy it, movie. They are obviously related, so cut the distracting bullshit.
This is far from the worst horror movie that I’ve seen this year. It won’t make my bottom 5 for the year or anything. But it’s a waste of great sets and a decent concept that mistakes jump scares for legitimate content. My advice is to stay home and watch Demon Knight instead. You will have plenty more opportunities with this series, as Annabelle 3, The Conjuring 3, The Nun 2 and additional spinoff The Crooked Man are all on the way. If one of them doesn’t explain how those two characters aren’t sisters, then this whole franchise can fuck itself.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nun_(2018_film)#/media/File:TheNunPoster.jpg
