'The Nun,' a horror prequel to The Conjuring 2, opens with a suicide which I think perfectly sums up this movie: overkill. A nun ties a noose around her neck and then jumps out the window of the abbey.
Our story is set in 1952 Romania—does every horror movie take place before the invention of cell phones?—where the Vatican sends Father Burke and Sister Irene to investigate the suicide. They're led to the abbey by a French Canadian who discovered the body. This character adds some comic relief and backstory, as well as some pickup lines for our leading nun. It turns out that lots of freaky things happen at the abbey, caused by the demon Valak seen in The Conjuring 2, and no one in the village goes near it.
Upon their arrival, they discover the body isn’t where they left it… never a good sign. They then talk to the abbess, who has a mysterious veil over her face (I wonder who the demon is…).
Two nights in a row while waiting to get more information, Father Burke and Sister Irene choose to spend the night at the abbey—first mistake. And while I know it’s 1952, they sleep in separate rooms and continually go off on their own, where they are grabbed from behind by creepy hands and chased by a demonic nun—lots of overused horror movie tropes.
The second half of the movie is just attack after attack with very little time for explanation and no real suspense. If you ask me, more effort towards developing the antagonist and fewer jump scares would up the fear factor, rather than relying on the "scary nun" trope. The powers the demon possesses aren’t fully realized, and without knowing how much it’s capable of, the viewer spends the whole time just trying to keep up with all the jump scares and not really being fearful for our heroes.
I found myself asking, “Wait, did they just die?” multiple times. The demon had multiple opportunities to kill everyone or possess them at this point, yet it just continues to allow them to live and try to find a way to kill it. While it’s said it can take whatever form it needs to in order to lure its victims, why was it a nun 90% of the time and still a nun in The Conjuring 2? Shouldn’t it trick them into thinking it’s one of them?
I could ask a million more questions, but I don’t think answers exist. Yes, this film will give you a bit of a scare if you’re into that, but that seemed to be the filmmakers’ only goal. They didn’t try to make anything of substance. Hopefully, future installments in The Conjuring franchise will bring some new approaches to the horror movie genre instead of using the same old tricks.
