Review of The Nun (2018) by Angryshark92 — 07 Sep 2018

The Nun is supposed to be a prequel to The Conjuring series and explain the origins of one of its most creepy characters... and while it does that to an extent... I cannot help but feel like this movie failed to enhance the scare factor of Valak's background.

The movie centres around the Vatican sending a priest and a novitiate Nun to investigate the apparent suicide of a Nun from a reclused church in the woodlands of Romania. The two are sent to determine why a suicide was committed as it is considered to be a grave sin to take your own life. While they are there they encounter strange occurrences and face spectral encounters that leave them to wonder whether the grounds there can still be considered holy.

The Nun is creepy in it's atmosphere, and most of the credit for that has to go to the soundtrack artist for creating eerie and uncomfortable tracks to accompany the movie, the setting in Romania is also due some credit as the defiled church, and the surrounding woodlands were also very atmospheric and creepy. Notice how I say creepy and not scary. Valak herself, is as expected, a very ominous looking figure and certainly helps keep the tensions and heartbeat high, but that is about all I have in mind for positives to mention.

The plot is unoriginal, to say the least. Portal from hell released these demonic spirits that want to possess hosts to spread the evil to anyone that treads on it's unhallowed ground... I cannot tell if this is part of The Conjuring storyline or a mixture of Doom and Amityville Horror... blended in the most unnatural and contrived way possible. The Conjuring movies were great because they always had tension, the jump scares were timed right, the acting was great, the movies was dark and ominous (Minus the CGI Hook Bro, still makes me laugh) and the plot was interesting for the most part, but The Nun had some really awkward light moments with Frenchie that made the audience laugh and kind of broke the tension and immersion for me. I won't lie, I chuckled too, but I see these types of movies to be scared and The Nun just did not scare me at all. I have to repeat this one more time... "It was creepy, but it was not scary".

+ Creepy atmosphere.

+ Great soundtrack.

+ Valak is still a menacing evil spirit.

+ Excellent location choice.

- Redundant and poor plotline.

- Mediocre acting.

- Predictable.

- Creepy, but not scary.

- Light hearted moments break tension.

- Loosely ties into Conjuring series, contrived almost.

- Valak deserved more screentime.

- Some cringe-worthy moments.

I guess I'll have to chalk this up to seeing too many horror movies recently, because I was able to predict every plot device and jumpscare. That's not too brag, its just the truth when you have seen enough of these types of movies. I thoroughly enjoyed The Conjuring movies as I thought those were scary, but these spin offs are barely tethered to the series and tie in loosely to those films, if at all.

Overall, I cannot say I recommend this to anyone outside of hardcore fans of The Conjuring series, as it will most likely disappoint. It was nice to see Valak get her own movie and have the origin explained but it could have been done a lot better and with better plot development. Seems like I missed opportunity to me. This movie is a 40 for me.