The Nun review: a spookily scare-free expansion of the Conjuring universe
Dir: Corin Hardy. Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir, Jonas Bloquet, Jonny Coyne, Bonnie Aarons, Charlotte Hope, Lili Bordán. 15 cert, 96 mins
Beware, sphenisciphobes: The Nun contains more than one nun. Whatever the collective noun is for them – “pray”, “flap”, “superfluity”, or “murmur”, says Google – they’re swishing about all over the place in this fifth film within the universe of The Conjuring, 2013’s proudly fact-based horror hit. Perhaps The Nuns was simply deemed a less nunnerving title. And Then There Were Nuns?
Serious horror face now on, along with some head-shaking: The Nun isn’t scary enough, doesn’t move fast enough, and has not-quite-characters who weirdly feel as though they’re occupying different films. All told, it feels like a bit of a placeholder in this series – more so than last year’s daft but effective devil-doll prequel, Annabelle: Creation.
While a fair way off disastrous, thanks largely to some tempting production design, it’s never likely to be vintage horror if your primary instinct is to praise the sets.
We go way back to 1952 in Romania, ostensibly to explain how that evil cowled wraith from The Conjuring 2 came to have such a colossal bug up her fundament. It’s unclear by the end if this has been exactly settled – some people must just have screeching-undead- pestilential-nun resting face – but really, the explanatory side of things is hardly the point.
The point is the screeching, the part where someone’s buried alive, the ear-bursting sound, and the creeping feeling in just about every sequence that hideous old nunface is about to pop up and go ballistic.
The setting is a monumental spooky abbey, deserted by everyone except undead nuns, and a few that are, shall we say, borderline. As a venue for jump-scare shenanigans, it’s unashamedly hokey and Hammer-ish in a promising way. British director Corin Hardy (The Hallow), who took this production to Actual Transylvania, embraces every campy-Gothic opportunity as a stylist and lights it all very well.
It’s just a pity nothing at all compelling is happening, story-wise. A troubled priest (Demián Bichir), a novitiate about to take her vows (Taissa Farmiga) and a distractingly hunky French-Canadian guide hunk (Elle’s Jonas Bloquet) are the trio who wind up there to investigate an apparent suicide, get separated, and are then mauled by nuns for a solid hour.
Farmiga is an intriguing choice here, not just because she’s a very striking scream queen, but because her older sister Vera, whom she unignorably resembles, already headlines this franchise, as real-life psychic Lorraine Warren. Maybe future spin-offs – none of these films are making less money in a hurry – will uncover shared DNA between their characters, or even reveal that one is a younger version of the other. It’ll give the screenwriters something to do.
For now, The Nun has the inescapable feel of being not based on a true story – vaguely inspired though it might be by hauntings at Cârța Monastery – and in fact not based on a story at all, but a series of theoretically frightening ideas for scenes.
It has relentless nunface rising ominously from a dark pool with mood music. It has bells tinkling over occupied graves. It has a diabolical snake, and dead people playing Grandmother's Footsteps with bloodied sackcloths over their heads. It’s sludgy, and kind of random, and if you already know you’ll enjoy it anyway, you undoubtedly will.
