Movie Rating 4 out of 10
Family Rating Not suitable for children and has frightening images with demons and dead nuns etc.
If you are a fan of the old Hammer horror film productions starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing then the setting of ‘The Nun’ will get you excited. Picture an old run down Abbey in Romania surrounded by creepy woods, a rundown graveyard and blankets of mist swirling around your feet. Add to this a world-weary priest, who the Vatican teams up with a novice nun to visit this isolated building to determine whether it can still be considered a holy place. Then throw in the creepy Nun who made an appearance in Conjuring 2 and you should have a good old fashioned horror movie, full of suspense, well-timed scares and a need to check under the bed before you go to sleep at night. Unfortunately, there was ‘Nun’ of that (Apologies for Dad jokes).
The Nun is the fifth film in what they are calling the Conjuring Universe which already consists of the two Conjuring and two Annabelle movies. We first come across the Nun in Conjuring 2 when it appears in a vision to Lorraine Warren and turns out to be the form used by a demon called Valak. Those two scenes are quite suspenseful and the appearance of the Nun is quite powerful. However, in this movie, the evil Nun is seen in the first scene and pops up quite regularly floating around the abbey. While scary in small doses the Nun is so often seen during this film that it doesn’t have the shock value that it had in The Conjuring.
There are only a few cast members and none of any note. The script was poor and the characters had no chemistry and so I never worried about whether they would escape or not. There were a few spots that induced jumps but they became predictable and really were used to cover any real suspense. The only real value of the movie came at the end when it was explained how the demon Valak was able to leave the abbey and later make contact with Lorraine Warren. So once again I leave the theatre disappointed and still waiting for a great horror movie to make me think twice about entering my empty house at night.