The Nun

If you had told me five years ago that one of my most anticipated movies of 2018 would be titled 'The Nun' I would've been very surprised. It was though. I had been looking forward to this movie ever since it was announced. I'm a huge fan of both of 'The Conjuring' movies, but have admittedly not loved either of the two 'Annabelle' spin-offs. I was very pleased to see James Wan was attached to the writing side of things on this one though and so held out high hopes for it. Sadly though, I have to report this is another complete misfire.

Starting with the positives though - the movie looks great. The set decoration is truly terrific in nearly every scene and the building and surrounding area that the film is set in were ideally selected. The groundwork was there for this to be a very creepy movie. At times the movie does work too, but that is mainly when it is being subtle. There are a lot of scenes where images of 'The Nun' are sort of there, but also sort of not. You question yourself whether you are actually seeing what you think you are. I really liked that side of things. Too often though the film is far too in your face. The demon will jump out of a tree and scream into a character's face (a very lion-like and un-scary scream I would have to say as well).

The dialogue in this film is a real mess too, which surprised me considering Wan's involvement. The character of 'Frenchie' is particularly painful. He is meant to be the comic relief, but nothing he says is in any way funny, and is frankly a little embarrassing in parts. Also some of the things the demon says like, "The village will be missing its idiot tomorrow" (or something to that effect), are cringe-worthy and should never have made the final cut.

I was very let down by this film. There are a lot of jump-scares, and not one of them gave me the slightest jolt. My heart-rate never rose above resting in any scene and I was frankly bored for the most part. The only saving graces were that the film looked great, connected in with the rest of the series well and had a truly great final scene that left me a little blown away. I didn't want this to have to be a negative review, but there was no other way to go about it.

Preface: I'm not the biggest fan of the Conjuring series as a whole.

Overall, The Nun was a pretty good movie. The film was shot wonderfully, locations were beautiful, color was perfect, and FX were spot on. That being said... for a demonic style horror film, I really prefer a little more background. With films out like Hereditary that are based in real, historically accurate lore, the bar has been set higher in that genre. The Nun's plot seemed rather thrown together to me.

On the plus side... Taissa Farmiga is an amazing actor and was brilliant. I almost give her full credit for me liking the film as much as I did. I really believe she is a staple to the horror genre. Bonnie Aarons is amazing as the Nun as well. I do wish they would use a little prosthetics on her to keep the nun from looking so much like her. After her role in these films I don't know if i'll ever be able to see her as anything but an evil, demonic nun. Overall... I give 6 out of 10.

It seems like, in The Conjuring 2, the writers just thought: "a monster in a nun costume - that seems really cool!" Then, when they try to build a story around it, they can't get the square peg to fit in the round hole. It's a nun monastery in Romania. And a demon called Valak. But why is he running around in a nun costume? That story doesn't get developed enough. A good ghost story always have a mystique and history, but this movie doesn't deliver in that aspect. Instead they seem just to rely on jump scares and cheap thrills.

Was there a plot? Nun Were there any scares? Nun Any good acting? Nun Any reason to go see this movie? Nun

This film is OBVIOUSLY missing the James Wan touch that we loved in the conjuring universe films. Even when Wan used jump scares , it worked bc the atmosphere was tense and creepy . In "The Nun" they're overly planted everywhere in the movie to make up for the fact that the director couldn't keep the audience captivated any other way.

The plot is basic to say the least, it's almost like they just threw it together in 5 minutes to make up a back story for The Nun. The film had so much potential to give the audience a interesting creepy back story to one of the conjuring's iconic villains. Instead we're saturated with filler for the 1st and 2nd act , and FINALLY get something going on the final act . Up until then it's nothing but jump scare city . So if that's up your alley for horror movies then you'll love this . I personally think the brief amount of time The Nun was in the Conjuring 2 was 100000x better than this full length film.

They also tried to go with this new trend of adding some comedy into a horror film and it's just badly placed and awkward . The acting is okay . Taissa Farmiga & Demien Bichir are the main characters and give pretty good performances.

Anyway, Overall this movie could've gone straight to DVD or Netflix . Don't think it deserved to hit the big screen if it wasn't going to be directed by Wan . There's some creepy/scary enjoyable moments but overall it's very cliche and downright boring at times. Watch when you're at home on a rainy day with nothing do. Don't waste ur money like i did