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| photo courtesy of gotchamovies.com |
The Nun
tells the origin story of the mysterious, demonic villain from The Conjuring 2. Set in 1950’s Romania,
it follows a young novitiate (Taissa Farmiga), a priest (Demián Bichir), and a local
villager Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) who investigate a death on the grounds of the Carta Monastery.
Once inside, they discover that a powerful demon by the name of Valak has been
haunting the Monastery and its inhabitants, seeking a way to escape the castle
walls.
Like its Conjuring series predecessors, The Nun looks great. It’s not a masterpiece
of cinematography, but its Abbey setting makes for some wonderfully creepy,
gothic atmospherics; it’s all long hallways, big stone antechambers, and candlelit
chapels. If there was ever a conducive environment for spooky thrills, it looks
like this.
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| photo courtesy of bloodydisgusting.com |
And yet somehow, the filmmakers
have a lot of trouble producing scares. Previous Conjuring movies have favored jump scares over more powerful, slow-burn
horror (an approach I frequently lament), but at least their jump scares were genuinely
frightening. The Nun, by contrast, struggles
to scare the audience with any of the
means at its disposal. We’re talking about a premise practically bursting with potentially
horrific scenarios, but the filmmakers just don’t have the imagination to bring
any of them to fruition (apart from one uncanny jump scare, which was featured
in the trailer). For the most part, they seem content to rely on the Nun’s naturally
frightening face to carry the day, but even when she (She? He? It? They?)
finally deigns to come onscreen, she doesn’t really do much. As my insightful movie-going companion put it, “we just
kind of walk around hallways catching glimpses of something in the distance.”
Like a demon whose presence
originates from a gaping passageway to hell, The Nun’s problem with scares stems—at least in part—from a problem
with narrative. Now, in fairness, a horror flick doesn’t always need a strong plot to thrive if it can make the experience
worthwhile in other ways. But in the absence of real spooky goodness, The Nun’s thin plotting becomes all the
more apparent and all the more critical. There’s a laundry list of mistakes:
dropped subplots, bare minimum character development, a rough third act, and an
abrupt, unsatisfying ending.
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| photo courtesy of fandango.com |
Here and there, you get
the sense The Nun might be
consciously trying to delve into its pulpier, cheesier instincts. Take one
scene, where an enemy fails to succumb to prayer and a crucifix… but gets laid
low by a shotgun blast to the head. Or another, where Frenchie responds to the discovery
of an ancient relic with “Holy shit!” and Father Burke replies, “The holiest.” These
kind of fanciful moments (and, indeed, Frenchie’s character as a whole) might
be enjoyable, but they come too few and far between to make a substantial difference.
They’re awkward outbursts, not a kitschy undercurrent. So without even a
tongue-in-cheek attitude to save it, The
Nun isn’t worth the time.
TRAILER
Watch the trailer here.
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| photo courtesy of filmschoolrejects.com |
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