The Nun

James Wan directed The Conjuring in 2013. It was a fine horror story full of likable characters and performances and one that was surprisingly subdued, well for the most part, for a modern horror. It was grand. No one expected it to be the start of a cinematic universe (god I hate that term) but it made a lot of money and that's how Hollywood works these days. The Conjuring 2 and Annabelle 1 & 2 all followed. Bear with me for a second and I'll explain the time line. The Conjuring came first and then the first Annabelle film which was a prequel to it. Then The Conjuring 2 arrived followed by the second Annabelle film which was a prequel to the first Annabelle film (?!) and now we have The Nun which is a spin off from The Conjuring 2 but is set before ALL the others. I think. Right? Jesus it's confusing. Ok, The Nun. Hmmmm. Directed by Corin Hardy who made the solid Irish set horror The Hallow in 2015.

Romania. 1952. A priest, Father Burke and a trainee nun, Irene, arrive at Cârța Monastery to investigate strange occurrences after a nun takes her own life. Their guide is a young French Canadian man called Frenchie who found the body and who is hesitant to return to the scene. The villagers in the small town below the monastery are so scared of the place that they don't even say it's name and once the trio arrive at the doors they realise exactly why the place inspires such fear.

Scary nuns are nothing new. Powell & Pressberger were scaring us with one in the Black Narcissus back in the forties. in 1979 Anita Ekberg was a Killer Nun with a habit ( get it!! habit....sorry) of syringing peoples eyes. Vanessa Redgrave freaked us out a long time ago as a bride of Christ diddling herself with the charred femur of her executed lover in The Devils. Even the Chicago based Penguin of the Blues Brothers gave us the fear. The scary nun of this film isn't a patch on any one them. TBH, it doesn't deserve to share a paragraph with them. You see, The Nun is bad. It fails miserably at being a horror by not being scary in the slightest, it's riddled with plotholes and dead ends, it leans way too heavily on the jump scare/loud noise cliches of modern horror and to top it off it manages to make its 96 minute running time feel about twice that. All that said it's still better than the Annabelle entries mentioned above but that's damning it with very faint praise.

Taissa Farmiga as Irene and Demián Bichir as Father Burke are the only really good thing about it all. They genuinely try their best and play the whole thing completely straight, Irene the wide eyed innocent who telegraphs her entire storyline early on and Burke as the gruff, seen it all priest who will get the job done. Two fine actors who really deserve better than this. Other moments only entertain because they bring to mind better scenes from better films. A moment of subterranean trauma comes directly from Lucio Fulci's City Of The Living Dead and Wes Craven's The Serpent And The Rainbow, an early carriage ride through the woods tips it's hat to many, many similar scenes in Hammer horror movies, bloody visions throughout the film would feel right at home in Event Horizon and so on. The entire yarn is really just a collection of things a seasoned horror fan will spot right away. It brings nothing new to the table. Nothing. One intriguing aside about damage done during World War 2 suggests we might be looking at a storyline about evil not always being supernatural but nothing comes of it and it's a pity because it might have added a much needed bit of depth.

It's just another cynical money making exercise, a way to pad out a franchise that shouldn't really exist. It kind of ties in with The Conjuring 2 but there's no substance to it at all and to add insult to injury it ends in such a way that there will have to be a sequel. A sequel to a prequel to a sequel *head explodes*. And of course it follows the franchise rules that say each successive entry must be on a bigger scale, must be louder, must have more CGI. This might share dna with The Conjuring but one scene involving shotguns, histrionic screaming, whirlpools and famous bodily fluids shows just how much that dna has been tainted by the need to turn everything up to 11. Give me a few creaky floorboards or a dark shadow any day. The words subtlety and suggestion mean nothing here. 

It's not good. And it will make a tonne of money. And like a fuckin eejit, I'll be here moaning about The Nun 2 : Nun Harder sometime in the future. Go see Black 47 instead.