The Nun (2018)

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The 'Conjuring' franchise can get a bit confusing at this point, if you're only reading this and haven't seen any of it yet. To make things easy, however, just know that the 'Annabelle' movies stand on their own as a set of films attached to 'The Conjuring', and the 'Nun' movies stand on their own as a couple of prequels to literally everything. So, if you wanna do these chronologically, 'The Nun' films are where you want to start. But fair warning, most of the franchise is better after these films take place.

The nun in question is Valak (Bonnie Aarons), who established herself as the Warrens' archenemy in 'Conjuring 2.' So yeah, this is a second origin story, establishing where the demonic nun in Ed's painting, and Lorraine's visions comes from. By the way, Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) are not a part of these movies. Instead, we get a handful of unlikely heroes; a nun yet to take her vows, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga - Vera's sister); a French-Canadian villager, who simply goes by "Frenchie" (Jonas Bloquet); and, perhaps most entertaining, an almost-bad-ass priest named Father Burke (Demián Bichir).

The short of it is that the abbey the nun terrorizes was built in the dark ages by an occult-obsessed Duke who summoned Valak through a rift in the catacombs for... reasons? Anyway, he was eventually killed by Christian knights, and the rift was sealed with a convenient vial of the blood of Jesus Christ. In WWII, bombing loosened the rift, and since then, nuns have kept things protected with prayer. But in 1952, the demonic force manages to escape, taking the form of a nun, and terrorizing the abbey, causing one of the sisters to hang herself.

The hanged sister is discovered by Frenchie, and that's where Father Burke and Sister Irene are called in to action to explore the abbey and figure out what's what, and hopefully contain the evil force terrorizing the area. But since we have 'Conjuring 2,' we kind of know that evil doesn't necessarily stay put. Having said that, however, I won't spoil anything further as to what happens with our leading three. Speaking of which, let's get into that a little bit, because both religious figures here are such polar opposites.

While Frenchie is a sort of "every-man" for us to relate to, and his performance is more or less what you'd imagine it to be, it's almost fascinating how underwhelming Irene is while Burke is so over the top. I found for the most part, Taissa Farmiga was pretty wooden all the way through. She's supposed to be all "pure," I suppose, but there's no real personality to her whatsoever. I'm guessing a lot of that was direction, however, director Corin Hardy here is still pretty fresh-faced at the time, and in all honesty, this chapter of the 'Conjuring' series is, at its best, just okay.

Demián Bichir, on the other hand, is clearly having some fun with this role, delivering serious performance with his best Batman voice. He even delivers some of the funniest, if cheesiest lines in the film. I laughed out loud at him saying "The holiest." Without context, I know that makes me sound like an asshole, but trust me, the laughter is warranted. In my own way, I kinda love Father Burke. He's not what I'd call excessively over the top or anything, but his character comes across as a sort of Dirty Harry/Noir detective, and the dude is a priest.

This one didn't do well, critically, and there are various reasons for that. Aside from opposing performances, my biggest criticism, and it may come as no surprise, considering the subject matter, is that it's preachy. The whole thing is essentially about the power of prayer keeping evil contained, and we all know the evil escapes anyway, so it's also a real downer of a movie when you take a moment to think about it. For me, I could see it becoming a guilty pleasure over time, but it's not that good overall, and the scares are much stronger in other chapters of the 'Conjuring' franchise.

2/5

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