The Nun II (2023)

Score: 2 / 5

The Conjuring and its subsequent franchise are important, there's no doubt about that. But why the brilliant likes of James Wan & Co. would entrust their series to an incompetent artist like Michael Chaves is beyond me. Unlike the Saw franchise, which Wan and Whannell long since wrote off and disowned after their iconic first installment, they keep actively producing entries in this haunted-house-meets-possession series (along with Insidious), and I for one enjoy all of them so far. But Chaves's films -- starting with The Curse of La Llorona, then The Devil Made Me Do It, and now this -- are easily my least favorite of the bunch. His aesthetic style is almost nonexistent, his storytelling ability negligible, and his films dull between only occasionally effective jump scares.

And this from someone who really enjoys Valak, the "demon nun," who has become the primary antagonist of this franchise. She first appeared in The Conjuring 2, in some of its most terrifying moments, as a vengeful force determined to haunt Lorraine Warren. Valak has since made appearances in Annabelle: Creation -- which implies her involvement with the Annabelle demon Malthus -- and in her own spin-off The Nun. That film, a magnificent exercise in excess, notably attempted a new flavor of Grand Guignol camp in the genre that is rare (one that surely informed the aesthetic of this year's The Pope's Exorcist). And with something like a toothy, yellow-faced nun haunting cloistered abbeys, that approach was brilliant.

I had hoped that a sequel to that film would double down on this aesthetic, legitimizing it and continuing the titular nun's legacy as a spooky Halloween staple. But Chaves and his team, in slowing the pace, trivializing the story, and sapping the film of excitement and ingenuity, makes the film a miserable low point in the franchise while ensuring another film must be made. Granted, it's possible that the greenlit The Conjuring: Last Rites will wrap everything up, but either way, The Nun II proves itself a redundant and superfluous entry that adds fluff where it is neither needed nor wanted.

It begins five years after the first film, with Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) befriending novitiate Debra at a convent in Italy (Storm Reid) as they are tasked to investigate a string of deaths across Europe. Each murder, gruesome and violent like the immolation that opens this film, is enacted on religious leaders such as priests and are being attributed to the influence of a demon. Irene already has her suspicions that it's the one that got away. So to speak. On their travels, they learn a bit about Valak's demonic origins and learn that everyone being murdered is in some way related to St Lucy, patron saint of the blind whose eyes were kept as holy relics. Irene is also subjected to visions of Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), which lead her to France.

Intercut with these developments, we see Maurice working at a French boarding school as groundskeeper and maintenance man. He befriends a young Irish girl there, but we're shown several scenes of him speaking with an invisible force and acting, well, possessed. The girls play games in the attic that turn violent after they encounter a demonic goat that terrorizes them. Maurice's resistance crumbles until we become certain that Valak -- surprise! -- wasn't banished to hell at the end of the first film but instead, weakened, latched onto Maurice. Except this isn't a surprise to us, because we saw a sign of it on Maurice's neck at the end of the previous film. Another redundancy.

The incompetent screenplay by Ian B. Goldberg (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Eli, Fear the Walking Dead) doesn't stop there. After an early conversation between Irene and Debra (who are both wonderful and deserved a lot more to do) in which a doubting Debra asks about the miracle of the Eucharist and transubstantiation, I suspected we'd be treated to some miracle about that. After much ado, and Irene finally unmasks Valak -- again -- she needs the blood of Christ -- again -- to vanquish Valak -- again. But the precious vial of it from the first movie is gone, of course! What is she to do? Lo and behold, we're spoon-fed the explanation (in case you didn't see it coming) that Irene is in fact a descendant of St. Lucy, hence her visions and Valak's obsession with her, and so she uses the relic to stall Valak. Renewed with faith, Irene and Debra pray together and the wine (the school used to be a winery after it was also a convent?) spontaneously explodes into the blood of Christ and drowns Valak back to hell.

Except that Irene is still suspicious at film's end, we're not given any reason to think it didn't work this time. Which is infuriating, as we know that Maurice is yet to be exorcised by Lorraine Warren (who, played by Vera Farmiga, is also revealed to be a descendant of St. Lucy, which is a nice consummation of the sisterly casting choice). So somehow Valak will return in the timeline before The Conjuring, and it's just annoying to have this middling story in the meantime, forcing us to tread water before something exciting actually happens.

My biggest gripes so far have been the story, and that is fair. The performances are all solid, no question, and some of the effects are exciting. I personally really liked the demon goat, although its introduction feels more than a little like something out of The Da Vinci Code or Indiana Jones. I was annoyed at the prevalence and pedestrian quality of Valak's presence; while she's arguably more mysterious (read: shrouded in darkness to the point of incomprehensibility) here than in the previous film, there's no inventiveness to her appearance or behaviors here. She's just there, and we're desensitized to her frequent, obvious presence. I'd have preferred the Grand Guignol approach to her, but if not, then something more like in The Woman in Black. Besides Valak, the film wallows in its inability to produce earned fear, overutilizing slow pans and exaggerated sound effects to occasionally startle us rather than eke out any modicum of actual terror. It feels like the editors and producers called the shots with a stopwatch, every ten minutes or so requiring a loud bang or pop-out in order to continue.

Missing (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

Who knew that 2018's Searching would spawn a franchise? That might be a bit ambitious to say, as Missing isn't really a sequel so much as a sister film or continuation of similar ideas. It's another "screenlife" film, as the relatively new terminology allows us, an evolution of found footage films that really kicked off in the early-to-mid 2010s. For reference, Paranormal Activity 4 and The Den were probably (arguably) the first forays into depicting most of their action on computer screens, and they were released in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Timur Bekmambetov coined "screenlife" and has directed or produced the most work in the burgeoning subgenre. Other than Searching, notable titles include Profile, Unfriended, and Host. The format isn't for everyone -- though it thankfully doesn't induce as much motion sickness as found footage films usually do -- and I personally find the constant clicking and multiple windows and tabs and speedy (read: reckless) web searches to be more anxiety-inducing than others might.

Yet, as Bekmambetov and Aneesh Chaganty have demonstrated time and again, it is a fabulous medium for mystery-thrillers with an edge for real-life horrors. I imagine it's also an editing nightmare, but it's telling that the directors of Missing previously edited Searching. The film begins with a barrage of images that includes references to the previous film, revealing that they are in the same shared universe of mystery, false identities, digital crimes, and deadly real-world consequences. This time, our protagonist is a young woman named June (played by the always surprising Storm Reid) who, after a wild week of partying while her mother (Nia Long) is on vacation in Colombia, is forced to start looking for her mother, who she declares missing. She does so almost entirely on her laptop, using social media, search engines, her linked cell phone and email, and even surveillance footage. She communicates this way with her mother's best friend, her own friends, a hired hand in Colombia, and an FBI agent assigned to her case. It may stretch credulity, but it also functions to stretch our conception of how to use these technologies; at least, it does for me, though I expect Gen Z viewers might relate a bit better.

Too many details will spoil this film, as it works best to be taken at face value. The mystery itself is breathless, presented in frenetic style by the worried teenager on her computer as she navigates Snapchat and Venmo and FaceTime and TikTok and Ring and Taskrabbit and online dating profiles and hacking into her mother's boyfriend's (Ken Leung) e-mails. She's resourceful in intimidating ways -- a call to her mother's hotel with its Spanish-speaking clerk works because of June's quick-witted use of Google Translate -- and finds local help on the ground in the form of Javi (played by a heartwarming Joaquim de Almeida, who has a surprisingly emotional role to play). But the screenplay is also hopelessly convoluted, as far too many red herrings make the central mystery sometimes forgettable. That's always the problem with mysteries, right? They're either too simple or far too complex. Here, at least, it seems appropriate, because the internet makes everything far too complex.

But that also makes Missing a hell of a lot of fun. And, in some ways, an interesting look at the ways technology both helps and hurts us these days.

The Invisible Man (2020)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The Dark Universe may be dead on arrival -- for now -- but its monsters can't be kept down. I've enjoyed the recent attempts at reviving Dracula and the Mummy, but it's fair to say that those big-budget exercises in mass market consumption lost their bite in lacking much artistic integrity. Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man, though, is a magnificent outing for one of the most underserved characters in the Universal monster lineup, one that honors its source material while effectively and brilliantly updating it for a new age of gods and monsters.

We begin under a cliffside estate, a modern Gothic mansion at night, with floor-to-ceiling windows that immediately frame our story in a place of invisible walls. The only sound is from the pounding waves hundreds of yards below the bedroom from which a young woman is attempting to escape. Cecilia, we learn quickly, drugged the man in bed next to her (whose arm is still wrapped around her sleeping body) and has prepared to leave in the dead of night, stealthily getting her clothes, disarming the alarm, and trying desperately not to make too much noise. It's not until she finally gets off the property and into her sister's getaway car that her husband appears, shattering the car window and proving to us that he is a violent, controlling monster intent on keeping his property in his grasp.

Once Adrian, the man in question, turns up dead by suicide, Cecilia tries to rehabilitate herself into society. Living with her friend and his daughter, she learns to go outside again, exist in public, and even try to get a job. But something is terribly wrong: her breakfast goes up in sudden flames, a knife goes missing, her blanket is pulled off in the middle of the night, and her portfolio disappears just before her interview. Could these be the symptoms of Cecilia's cracking mental state? She can barely sleep, doesn't bother trying to improve her appearance, gets feisty and combative when people question her judgment. And yet we can't judge her because we've learned that she suffers severe PTSD as a result of her abuse at the hands of Adrian.

Whannell does a lot of great work here, no surprise, but I was most impressed in his focus on Cecilia. Played to stunning effect by Elizabeth Moss, Cecilia is a masterclass in rounded, dynamic character writing as well as heart-wrenching delivery. Often scrutinized through close-up shots in unflattering ways, Moss's face is a brutal canvas of terror. Her incredible control of every individual facial muscle notwithstanding, she manages to keep Cecilia from becoming a tortured wimp. She does get walloped a lot, and frankly a few of the more violent scenes were hard to watch, but everything she does is believable and sympathetic. How on earth do you try to convince others that your ex turned invisible when they already have a hard time believing that he's controlling and abusive?

This is a movie about psychological horror, to be sure, and the first half plays a line somewhere between Paranormal Activity and Room in its attention to Cecilia's mental and emotional breakdown. While we completely understand her stress and anxiety at suspecting that Adrian has returned from death and is invisible, we also understand the people around her who simply cannot accept that possibility. But Whannell complicates this already ambiguous story by showing us that Adrian has indeed returned. Well, "showing us" is perhaps the wrong phrase. While Whannell and his cinematographer Stefan Duscio work to isolate Cecilia in wide shots of an empty room or hallway, they brilliantly suggest all kinds of unseen horrors in the negative space around her. Often, nothing even happens, but we know full well that Adrian is there, somewhere, watching and waiting to pounce.

Whannell's screenplay is no less brilliant in its attempt to make a woman's forcibly silenced experience of abuse into a cinematic horror. Even if Adrian weren't always present, he would be; Cecilia can barely function without furtive glances down the hall or out the window. But just when the chilling psychological drama is wearing thin and you start to wonder if Adrian will ever really do anything more than creep around and take pictures, Whannell hits you with some of the most effective scares I've seen in a movie in a long time. I don't want to spoil it, but there's one scene of Storm Reid getting slapped that made me gasp and one scene involving a knife and a restaurant that made me yell out loud in the theater.

The turn to outright horror makes the final act of the film almost unbearably tense, and by the final sequence I had no idea what was going to happen. Suffice it to say that the finale sticks its landing and then some, and I could not have been happier with the film as a whole. This is no science fiction drama in which a mad scientist injects himself with a formula and can't reverse it; this is no super juice in a needle that may or may not unhinge his mind and drive him power-mad. Sure, there's some high-tech gear, but it looks suspiciously inspired by BDSM getup a la AHS: Murder House. This is pure, unadulterated real-world horror for the #MeToo era and for all time; the latter because Whannell's greatest feat is finally -- for the first time in any movie I can recall -- making a living, breathing invisible man as terrifying as he should be.

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

I don't know why this movie's getting so much crap. It's beautiful.

Disney's latest reclaiming of old territory tackles Madeleine L'Engle's sci-fi fantasy A Wrinkle in Time, a work of profound weirdness and abstraction. While critics and audiences seem intent on proclaiming the weirdness of this film, the excessive style over substance, and some sizeable plotholes, I'd argue the same things about the source material. It's a children's fantasy, for goodness' sake. In fact, compared with Lewis or Carroll or even Rowling, I'd argue that L'Engle's fantasy is notably inferior in style, scope, and detail. So before you hear any more criticisms about these elements, question the critic: Do they really know what they're talking about? And do you care?

While this new film is indeed a victory of style over substance, that totally fits its messages of beauty and empowerment. Its trippy visuals and fabulous interplay of light and darkness feel more like the book than any amount of world-building details might. More importantly, its beauty is found in its casting and design aspects. The characters quietly reveal themselves as the most diverse group I've seen from a Disney movie, and even the interracial romance at the center of the story is a total nonissue. This is the future, guys. This is the new normal. And it is glorious.

The three Mrs W (Whatsit, Who, and Which), played by Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, and Reese Witherspoon are lovely, but it's their costumers and stylists who take the real glory here. Along with the production designers and artists. Everything in this movie is colorful, extravagant, and kinetic. A Wrinkle in Time is pure escapism, pure cinema: magic cooked up on the screen and blasted into your retinas with full force. The music is as soaring as the visuals, the acting pitch-perfect, the cinematography awesome. It's got the splendor of Avatar and the heart of Narnia and a spirit all of its own, fully embracing its own glorious diversity and female empowerment.

Of course, all this praise is not to say that the movie is perfect. Far from it. Its screenplay is mostly clunky and sparse: unfocused and seemingly without real inspiration, its stumbles its way through the story with no grace. Actually, my impression of the film was that Disney spent its resources on visual artists, good actors, and a great director, and then realized they needed some kind of script. They should have just let DuVernay do her thing. Which is to say that it's pretty clear there are significant power struggles here between her visionary vision and the studio's. And it has its weird moments, to be sure. I could have lived a long and happy life without watching Reese Witherspoon turn into a flying head of lettuce. I didn't need Michael Pena falling apart like a marionette. I didn't need Zach Galifianakis at all, especially not in a part that was female in the book. And giant Oprah -- though wonderful to behold -- felt a little unnecessary.

But when a movie can so easily transport you across the galaxy, steal your heart, and leave you breathless in wonder, who cares if it's densely plotted or thickly descriptive? Again, it's a children's fantasy, y'all! Movies like this are what America needs. Honest, sweet, and quietly insinuating its political correctness into mainstream entertainment. So go. Go watch it right now. See it on as big a screen as you can. Watching this movie right now is a political act. Support it. Give in to love and hope and light and all the things this movie champions. "Be a warrior!"

IMDb: A Wrinkle in Time