Valak, a demon in the guise of a nun, made its first horrific appearance in The Conjuring 2, haunting poor Lorraine Warren. It was revealed in that film that Valak was seemingly fated to face Lorraine after previous encounters. In Annabelle: Creation the demon made peripheral appearance in a photograph of the nun's time in Romania, a strange appearance when it escorts the wheelchair-bound child to her encounter with the Ram, and then in a post-credits scene (teasing an upcoming movie) stalking the halls of a monastery.
Here is that upcoming movie, the spinoff focused on The Nun. Demian Bichir and Taissa Farmiga play a priest and novitiate, respectively, who journey together to the Carta Monastery in Transylvania. The year is 1952 and the sisters cloistered in the abbey are terrified of an unholy evil haunting their halls. Mysterious deaths of the sisters may have launched this investigation, but it is immediately clear that the horrors are not over. The presence of the two newcomers seems to provoke the demon, and so we embark on a roller coaster ride of terror.
The newest installment in the Conjuring franchise may not be its most original, most dramatic, or even most frightening, but it is easily the most atmospheric. It's structured not unlike a maze or haunted house attraction, with set piece after set piece constructed to give the target audience exactly what they want: jump scares and full-blown money shots of spooks and ghouls popping out of dark corners. A thickly Gothic atmosphere -- replete with crumbling abbeys, sizable cemeteries, and thick fog -- pervades the picture. Cinematographer Maxime Alexandre (Annabelle: Creation, Maniac, The Crazies) teams well with director Corin Hardy (The Hallow) in crafting a surrealistic world, filling it with insane horror and bewildering style. And, of course, the demon nun itself is a pure nightmare realized all over that silver screen.
Unfortunately, the film also feels highly contrived in comparison with the other films in its shared universe. More impressionistic than the others, it also features so many jumps and shocks that they don't all land well, rather than digging into the central horror of the demon nun itself. Instead we have reanimated corpses running amok, possessed children spitting out snakes, so many hallucinations that we don't know what's real. And the story itself, though promising, feels wholly unoriginal by its climax, at which point it should be at its most potent. When the novitiate claims her faith and takes her vows, when the hunky man helping comes to the rescue, and when the world-weary priest rallies to help, the film reaches a truly moving emotional height. It's sadly undercut when the trio then foolishly split up (as they have done the whole movie, despite the problems this has caused) and get into a hell of a lot of trouble.
As an addition to the franchise, this picture certainly creates a niche for itself in both style and substance, while adding several dots for fans to connect with the other films. I particularly enjoy its aesthetic, and it seems like whatever the equivalent is of a haunted house entertainment spectacle, like a demon-possession version of Grand Guignol theatre. For a spooky time at the movies with one of the scariest horror icons of our age, you could do a lot worse than The Nun.
IMDb: The Nun
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