“Holy shit!” “The holiest!” – Actual lines of dialogue from this movie.
We have a fun (but potentially fatal) drinking game for you to play while watching The Nun.
Every time the camera pans away from a character, only to pan back and reveal something scary suddenly standing behind them, take a shot.
Every time the camera pans away from a character that already has something scary standing behind them, then pans back and the scary thing is gone, take two shots.
By the end of the movie, you will not be in a sober state. You might need to call an ambulance.
Although that might also be attributed to the blunt force trauma the movie subjects you to every four or five minutes, layering on pointless jump scare after pointless jump scare, the cinematic equivalent to there being a little electrical buzzer in your chair, and someone arbitrarily shocking you without rhyme or reason.
To say that The Nun is the worst of the The Conjuring Universe movies goes without saying, but it is not the least fun. That award still goes to the first Annabelle, which managed to be both not scary and kind of dull, but at least it was a story competently told.
The rules of The Nun make absolutely no sense, with the origin of the demon told extremely quickly in a single flashback, and the manner in which it manifests itself and haunts anyone in the vicinity seems to change from scene to scene. It is a Nun because it wants to hide in this haunted abbey full of nuns so it can go unnoticed in their crowds, but it is also a small child sometimes because possessed small children are creepy, and also sometimes it is a REALLY old woman, because… that is what happens in this scene.
Not a single aspect of the plot makes sense, from the recruitment of Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, younger sister of The Conjuring star Vera Farminga, and if you’re thinking that hiring someone who looks exactly like the star of the original movie is going to pay off in someone, we’ve got some bad news for you…), who head to Romania to investigate the suicide of a nun there. There are assisted by a French guy, whose name is Frenchie. Yup…
Upon arrival, they are immediately assaulted by haunted graveyards, visions, moving corpses, scientifically impossible puddles of blood… and we’re still in the first five minutes. It starts at 100 with the nonsense jumpscares and never lets up.
While it is a whirlwind of nonsense (and any horror fans worth their salt will probably see every single scare coming a mile off), there is a demented sense of entertainment to be found in there somewhere. It is as if two-thirds of the way through the movie, everyone involved just said “Fuck it!” and leaned into the madness, and it almost – almost – becomes good.
However, the biggest disappointment is figuring out how it all ties back to The Conjuring Universe, which was something the Annabelle movies pulled off fantastically well. Here, it is as if they began with the idea of a scary looking nun, and never really developed the idea beyond that.
If there is a sequel to this spin-off, and there may well be, as we have The Conjuring 3, Annabelle 3, and third spin-off The Crooked Man all on the way, hopefully they connect the dots in a smarter and scarier way.
The Nun is in cinemas right now.
Clip via Warner Bros. Pictures
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