The Nun Review

It's been a while since I did a movie review. And even longer since I did a movie review of a movie that I saw in theaters. Prior to "The Last Sharknado," which was a TV movie released in late August, my previous review was "Crazy Rich Asians," which I saw back on August 15. Truth be told, there's movies I could've seen and reviewed. But outside a little indie thriller called "Searching," which I did see and plan on reviewing soon, there really wasn't anything that grabbed my attention, so I did other things with my life as I waited for more notable movies to come out. Based on reviews, both from audiences and critics, as well as box office totals ("Crazy Rich Asians" and "The Meg" have been in the top two since they were released, prior to this past weekend that is), it doesn't appear that there was much out there that any of my family or friends were begging me to review either. Typical late-August/early-September lull. It's a period of time that Hollywood has learned to avoid, thus most movies that do come out are more or less dumping ground fodder. But the rest of the year has plenty of movies to offer, thus it should be full speed ahead from now until the end of the year. And we start with what you can call the first movie of the Halloween season, "The Nun."

This movie comes to us via The Conjuring franchise. With this being the second spin-off of the main two movies, with a whole room full of potential other spin-offs waiting in the wings, many of started referring to this as The Conjuring Cinematic Universe, because, you know, ever since "The Avengers," we all have to have one of those. But we're now five films in and it's been a mostly enjoyable ride. The biggest issue I have with the main two films is that they spend way too much time trying to convince the audience that these are true stories that actually happened, using that as a main scare tactic. When you look up the actual events, it's quite obvious that it's all a bunch of hogwash and the main investigators have about as much real life credence as any of those other dumb ghost story investigators that you see on TV. Not to say that all demonic possession stuff is fictional, but these specific cases are fantasy that paranoid individuals blow out of proportion. If the movies would just accept that and focus on giving me a good horror movie without pushing the true story angle so hard, I wouldn't be complaining about that so much because both "The Conjuring" and "The Conjuring 2" are solidly crafted horror films with good stories and interesting themes

When it comes to the spin-offs, well, I haven't seen "Annabelle," but reaction across the board says that I didn't miss anything. But I did see and enjoy "Annabelle: Creation," so I was hoping to get some good "Annabelle: Creation" vibes out of the "The Nun," especially since it didn't take much convincing for me to be on board with this. The character of this demonic Nun showed up in "The Conjuring 2" and that brief moment of screen time was extremely effective. Shortly thereafter they announced they were doing a whole film based off of that and my immediate reaction was "Yes, please!" I wasn't expecting a whole lot going in. They just needed to come of with a decent enough mythology behind this and put together a well-crafted movie full of effective scares and proper set up and I think this would've been a home run. That's what "Annabelle: Creation" did. I mean, we've done the creepy doll story a thousand times, but the reason we have is because the idea is effective when properly executed. The story and the characters from "Annabelle: Creation" weren't anything to write home about, but the way the set up the horror sequences in the film had me on the edge of my seat. Surely they can do this again, right?

Yet that's the most frustrating thing about this. James Wan, who is a master at horror and the reason this whole Conjuring franchise exists, helped right this script. In three out of four of these movies, everyone involved has known exactly what needs to be done in order to make the movies work. So what went wrong this time around? Before I go into specifics in tearing this down, I will say on a positive note that on a technical scale, this movie is quite excellent. The set designs are quite excellent. This Nun place that we spend most of the movie in is a creepy place set in the middle of no where with dark passages and creepy hallways. The score of the movie is effective. The movie is wonderfully shot with great visual effects and near perfect cinematography. We even had excellent acting throughout as our main characters, a young Nun who hadn't quite taken her vows and a more experienced priest assigned to investigate this matter, were characters worth caring about. Sure, we had a comic relief character named Frenchie that was mildly annoying, although I don't think he was quite as bad as some have claimed and didn't detract from the movie at all. And we even had a solid opening sequence that made me believe I was going to enjoy this movie despite the reviews.

But outside all of that, there's just nothing here. It's like a fancy, shiny outer shell with nothing inside. I said earlier that all they had to do was come up with a decent enough mythology behind this and I would've been sold. But there is no mythology here. Not one that's worth anything, that is. The set up here is that we have a demon from Hell who is trying to escape, but throughout history the Nuns at this place have done a great job of keeping the demon at bay by keeping it locked in Hell thanks to the blood of Christ. That is until sometime about 20 years before "The Conjuring" an airstrike of sorts breaks the seal and causes the demon to escape. But the demon can't become fully realized until it possesses a human form, so it wanders around as a nameless, shapeless demon taking the form of a Nun in order to try to possess one of the Nuns in the place. And that's it. That's our demon Nun mythology. The movie begins when a Nun at this place commits suicide, which causes the Church in the area to send people out to investigate what's going on and see if that place is still holy. I just wanted more out of this premise. I wasn't expecting a lot. Just more than what I got. I've seen monster-of-the-week episodes in "Supernatural" that were more creative. 

On top of this premise being as thin as humanly possible, the movie is not scary at all. Granted, I'm not one of these people that requires a horror movie to scare me silly in order to be pleased with the final results. In fact, I often appreciate a good indie horror film that spends more time focusing on story and characters rather than making me jump at every turn. I can come out loving a horror movie, even if I wasn't that scared. But this movie didn't give me story. It didn't give me good character arcs. It didn't hardly give any mythology. AND it wasn't scary. In fact, this demon Nun barely showed up in its own movie. I honestly think it got just as much screen time as it did in "The Conjuring 2." Our characters spent more time wandering around this place, talking to each other, investigating the situation, thinking they saw something around the corner and praying that they make it out alive than they did confronting the demon itself. I can appreciate a solid setup if the movie wants to first make me feel uneasy about the situation, but there has to be a balance. And even then, I didn't feel uneasy with the setup. I was just bored with the movie and confused as to why all these random supernatural events were happened that had zero explanation or zero purpose to them in the end.

In summary, this whole situation felt like the writers and director of "The Conjuring 2" came up with an excellent idea of what could've made a great spin-off movie and teased that with the demon Nun in their movie, but then whoever got put in charge of turning that concept into a full movie, whether it being themselves or a new team, ended up coming up completely blank as to how to execute this. There's great set designs, great acting, and near perfection on a technical scale, but no substance. There's a paper thin, run-of-the-mill demon mythology, a non-existent story, confusing supernatural events that showed the filmmakers didn't even know the rules of their own movie or what this thing was capable of and why, and a whole lot of attempted cliche jump scares and loud noises. The demon itself barely showed up in its own movie and when it did, it just unintimidatingly growled at the characters, which almost made me roll over laughing instead of cowering in my seat. But hey, I hear that the first Annabelle had a lot of these same issues. Yet they turned around and came up with a good movie the second time around with "Annabelle: Creation." Maybe they can follow suit with a sequel here, given how much money its made. My grade for "The Nun" is a 5/10.