Shudder Sunday: The Nun

Director: Corin Hardy

Year: 2018

Genre: Horror

Summary: When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together, they uncover the order's unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of a demonic nun.

0/5 Pineapples

Review:

If you couldn't tell this film was going to completely tank by the trailers alone... do you even watch horror movies?

I was suckered into seeing this because I went to the theatre to see A Simple Favor, but to my extreme disappointment, that was completely sold out. With no other options remotely interesting, my boyfriend and I decided to see the The Nun. The 28% on Rotten Tomatoes really says it all, but this movie somehow managed to be WORSE than I even expected.

The makers of The Conjuring made one good film (The Conjuring) and decided to beat the concept to death to fill seats. And at this point, I'm surprised people are still filling these seats and funding this awful series. The sequel was terrible, I didn't even invest in seeing the third, and the Annabelle's are really just humiliating to an otherwise great ghost story.

The Nun is an embarrassingly executed story of a convent that used to be the home of some king or duke or something who worshiped the devil. In doing so, he opened a portal to hell and a demon made its way out into our world. The demon disguises himself as a nun to blend in, but it's clear he's not like the rest. The nuns pray day in and day out to keep the portal shut, but basically the demon is winning and nuns are dying left and right.

I can honestly say that I had already lost my patience for this film about 5 minutes in.

The first scene is of two nuns in a dark, seemingly underground tunnel. One nun goes into a room, the other one waits outside panicking. And then there's a pretty predictable jump scare where we see one of the nuns get dragged away from the camera and into the darkness of the underground room. The nun who was left waiting goes up to her bedroom and proceeds to hang herself off of her bedroom window.

So, for some ridiculous reason, Sister Irene (played by Taissa Farminga of American Horror Story) who hasn't even taken her final vows to become a full-fledge nun is the chosen one to deal with this problem????? Yeah, I don't know. She's accompanied by a Father of the Catholic Church who's sent by the Vatican to investigate this sketchy convent. Also, there's some stupid-attractive delivery guy who was the one who found the nun hanging by her neck on his last delivery to the convent. He tags along with them cause, I mean, why not?

After some pretty poorly orchestrated jump scares that ultimately end in the demon just giving up and deciding not to kill them right then and there, we learn that the nuns are hiding a vile of the literal blood of Christ in some wall space for safe keeping... and that's what this motley crew needs to defeat the demon nun...

Sigh. I'm physically exhausted by discussing how terrible this film is.

Sister Irene manages to spit the blood of Christ onto the demon and everything is happily ever after until we see the shape of a crucifix protruding from the back of Hot Boy's neck. Then the writers do a little recap of the start of The Conjuring where we saw Ed and Lorraine Warren giving a class on demonic possession. And wouldn't ya know, it's Pretty Boy there on the screen that Ed and Lorraine are attempting to exorcise a demon from.

Roll credits.

Wow, good job James Wan, Atomic Monster Productions, New Line Cinema, and The Safran Company. Has Safran made a single good film in its life? New Line Cinema, you can do better... So so so much better. And, I'm sort of surprised James Wan wanted his name anywhere near this... Then again, he's made mistakes before. See also: Fast and Furious 7, Lights Out.

There was ONE SCENE in particular that really stood out to me. It's when the Father is roaming around the woods for the ghost of a boy he's responsible for killing. An exorcism gone wrong, kinda thing. He's in this graveyard alone when feet drop from the top of the shot. He looks up to see the body of a hanging woman who then opens her eyes and leaps on top of him. She's attacking and clawing at him, and the scene's super intense and awesome until it just cuts to the next scene. Like, what? I guess the writers had one good concept so they decided to throw it into the movie, willy-nilly with no conclusion or reason behind it. And, while that was one, singular, good scene, I can't help but feel it had been used in The Conjuring already, in some form or another.

Mr. Wan, just take your wins and go. The Conjuring was great, now please let it die.

As for The Nun: Poorly written. Poorly executed. Poorly shot. Poorly acted. Overall complete waste of time and money.

Thanks for coming to the most disappointing and negative review you'll probably ever come across in this blog.

Anyway, on to bigger and much, much better things.