THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
The Conjuring is an unlikely horror franchise because while the central films starring Patrick Wilson & Vera Farmiga as the Warrens are naturally entertaining stories, Warner Bros. couldn’t help themselves making cash-grabbing spinoffs in between. It may have worked for Annabelle, but I can’t say the same for The Nun.
PLOT
The 2018 film takes place in 1952 and follows Father Burke & Sister Irene, a nun in her motivate, being sent by the Vatican to investigate the death of a nun named Sister Elizabeth (Charlotte Hope) at a monastery in Romania. There, they meet a villager named Maurice aka Frenchie who discovered the body. There, they see the body and take a key from its corpse. When entering the abbey, they meet an Abbess (Gabrielle Downey) who requests for them to come back the next day as the nuns observe silence nightly. The first night staying in Romania goes horrible when Burke gets buried alive by the demon haunting the monastery. Luckily, Sister Irene is able to save him before it would be too late. The next day, she is able to explore the abbey on her own due to it being cloistered. Alone, she encounters a group of nuns who are praying constantly and taking shifts to keep the demon at bay. As she sees this, she converses with Sister Oana (Ingrid Bisu) who exposits the origin of the demon. When the abbey was built in the Dark Ages, the Duke at the time was obsessed with the powers of Hell and tried to open a rift in the catacombs to fully summon the demon. He was stopped & killed by the Christian knights to prevent it, but the bombings during WWII reopened the rift, unleashing the entity in the progress. Oana also points out that the demon takes the guise of a nun to prey on people’s weaknesses. Outside the abbey, Burke does further research and deduces the demon to be ‘Valak’. At a local tavern, Frenchie shares with patrons of visiting the abbey, he is warned by the bartender that Burke & Irene are in danger. When Burke tries to enter the abbey, the abbess confronts him and tells he won’t get in. When he mentions the key to her, she only tells him Irene is lost. This would lead to the demon trying to attack him again, revealing to take the guise of the abbess the whole time. Irene would soon be attacked by Valak as well but once Burke & Frenchie enter the abbey, she realizes the nuns she saw earlier, including Oana, weren’t real and Sister Victoria was sacrificing herself to prevent being possessed by Valak. She theorizes that the said demon can be stopped if they reseal the rift with the Blood of Christ. She and the men open a chamber with Victoria’s key to obtain the blood. Valak would soon re-emerge to attack them all. She would try to possess Irene, but Frenchie takes action by smearing the blood onto her face to free her from possession. The demon would then try to drown her, but the real nun is able to spit the blood onto its face, hoping to banish it back into the rift. All would believe the nightmare to be over once leaving the abbey, but little do they know that Valak took possession of Frenchie as an upside cross is marked on his back. The film would end in a 20 year tie jump, tying into The Conjuring in which Frenchie was exorcised by the Warrens but he was the one who showed Lorraine a vision of Ed dying. When the couple present the footage of this exorcism at a university seminar, it would lead to them investigating the Perron farmhouse haunting.
THOUGHTS
Because I didn’t mind Annabelle, I chose to be open minded with this spin-off. Sometimes that mindset bites my ass and this one is a big example because it sucked so bad. Director Corin Hardy tries so hard to recapture the natural horror James Wan left behind twice over, only for it to terribly backfire. The jump scares do not land at all because you know exactly how it’s gonna go and you’re just waiting for it to happen. I didn’t mind the acting however because Demián Bechir & Taissa Farmiga have me sold on making Burke & Irene compassionate believers of God who are willing to put their lives on the line to get rid of the evil they find lurking around. My problem is that they’re being forced to replicate the chemistry Wilson pulled off with Vera, Taissa’s sister, and it’s awkwardly obvious. I also did not mind Jonas Bloquet as Frenchie because he’s generally a nice guy who wants to help however. He’s not expecting to encounter such danger, but is willing to take a stand with the people who have a better idea of what to do. I would’ve liked him more though if he had an appropriate backstory to fit into the mold. The true MVP of this movie has to be Valak herself Bonnie Aarons. The whole time, her physical appearance was where you feel all the fright this movie is going for and you respect her for pushing the boundaries with her hypnotic eyes. Had she not been this good here and in The Conjuring 2, the whole franchise would’ve been doomed. Now the reason I hate this movie goes to how it’s enforcing the connection to the better story. I know prequels bring things together, but Annabelle was way more patient than this. Speaking of which, I didn’t even care when someone pointed out the same picture first shown in Annabelle: Creation since that Easter egg doesn’t elevate the plot at all. They’re trying to connect the dots the way Disney fills in all the plot holes of Star Wars with its constant spin-offs. The difference here is that the sooner you notice the intention, you’re distracted on how forced the connection it is. With that being said, the focus on tying all the pieces leads to a lot of decisions that don’t make sense to what is supposed to be the central story. I was really interested on how it get set up with the opening as it showed Valak actually had the key to access the Blood of Christ. It just gets weirder when you don’t even know how was that even possible in the first place, compared to not being able to take it back after Irene finds it. I even found it to be weirder for Burke to be told by the Pope he had limited access during his investigation. I understand they want this to be discreet, but it’s a pointless demand when he still had enough access to discover Valak’s identity. I even found it uncomfortable for Elizabeth’s body to be left at the abbey after being reported by Frenchie. That’s just fucked up if you’re asking me. Moving on, I felt that Valak took too long toying with Burke on the first night. If he is such a threat, that demon should’ve just straight up killed him instead of burying him alive. There wasn’t even a point to bury him when putting him in one with a tombstone and a bell of all things to warn Irene. And how are we supposed to believe the whole village is scared of the church if we only get one scene that pushes Frenchie back into the story? It wouldn’t hurt giving this village by having us share concern the more we focus on the villagers. It would’ve slowed things down, but it would’ve been an applauded effort. And who the hell is responsible for Irene’s visions since she’s psychic the whole time? Is she giving herself these visions or is Valak doing this to make her think she has a chance? Whichever the answer would be fucking confusing to know. If anything else wasted time, it had to be Irene being fully fledged as a nun before confronting Valak in the climax. It’s. not like she showed any doubt on doing so earlier, so it the ending would’ve not been any different if she was already fully fledged by the time she was introduced. To get this over with, The Nun is one of the worst horror ever made for lacking creativity as a whole. It baffles me that a sequel was able to be a reality. If you’re interested in that, good luck getting through this hot garbage.
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