DARK NUNS - Mark Reviews Movies

Dark Nuns, Well Go USA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 6, 2025

The role of women is systematically downplayed in the Catholic Church, so the exorcism thriller Dark Nuns, a standalone sequel to the 2015 movie The Priests, is inherently refreshing in at least one regard. The story here revolves around, as one could assume from the title, a pair of nuns who take it upon themselves to stop the demonic possession of a young boy.

Is that enough to make Kim Woo-jin and Oh Hyo-jin's screenplay much different than any other given exorcism story? It's not, unfortunately, but that's not because of the movie's main characters. They are intriguing on their own and possess a dynamic that's strong enough to make the script's eventual focus on rituals and rites disappointing.

The more noteworthy of the two characters is obviously and immediately Sr. Junia (Song Hye-kyo). She's introduced along the sidelines of the movie's opening exorcism scene, in which Hee-joon (Moon Woo-jin), believed to be possessed by an evil presence, has a couple of priests trying to rid the boy's body of the invasive demon. Junia arrives outside, lights a cigarette, and puts on her coif to reveal that this tough-looking woman is, indeed, a nun. In terms of introductions, director Kwon Hyeok-jae gives this character a pretty defining one, simply by way of a few visual contradictions.

In action, Junia is even more impressive, taking charge of the exorcism as if she's the only one in the room who knows what she's doing. It's tough to tell which of the major steps of the nun's process is more amusingly to-the-point: the way she talks down to the demon inside the boy ("Mom's spank always hurts the most," she scolds the evil spirt following some prayers) or how she pours a jug of gallons of holy water on the possessed boy (She apparently keeps a good stock of these containers in her car). This nun doesn't fool around with subtlety, and when confronting a demon that insults her and has caused much physical harm to this kid, why should she?

Anyway, the ritual is partially successful, leaving Hee-joon in a near-comatose state and the demon retreated from the surface. The kid ends up in the hospital, where he's watched over and cared for by Sr. Michaela (Jeon Yeo-been). This nun, who's also a doctor, is far more practical in her work and down-to-earth in her view of possession, believing that it's all grounded in matters of psychology.

Her mentor Fr. Paolo (Lee Jin-wook), a priest and psychiatrist, taught her everything she knows about the subject, although Michaela has had some personal experience with possession, too. As a child, she was "cured" of a "demon" by way of Paolo, but Hee-joon's arrival triggers some eerie dreams, suggesting that the nun might have some kind of spiritual sight, despite her vocal skepticism about the reality of demonic possession.

The plot, of course, has the true-believer nun teaming up with the skeptical one, after the boy's mother (played by Jeon Su-ji) dies either by suicide (She jumps from the hospital roof) or by demon (The large needle in her eye suggests some sort of foul play). While everyone is busy preparing the mother's funeral, Junia decides to take Hee-joon out of the hospital, in order to find additional spiritual treatment for the possession, and demands Michaela's help.

This setup is promising, primarily because the movie so firmly establishes these two characters, their differing opinions on the subject of demonic possession, and the conflict between them as to how to treat the boy. Quickly, though, it becomes clear that Kim and Oh are less interested in the characters, religious debate, and interpersonal clash of viewpoints and more so in the familiar formula of this kind of story.

It does have somewhat unique features in that regard, mainly in how Junia has an open mind about faith, leading her to seek help from shaman Hyo-won (Kim Gook-hee) and her disciple Ae-dong (Shin Jae-hwi), whose sensitivity to the spirit realm has made him nearly mute. The movie's own open-mindedness about faith traditions adds some level of variety to the proceedings, but whether the characters are using Catholic relics or shamanistic tools, we're basically dealing with the same sort of religious gimmickry in terms of the actual plot. That those elements become just as or more vital than the characters is what's frustrating here.

Eventually, the filmmakers do put the debate between faith and doubt aside, bringing the whole thing to the inevitable plot of this kind of story. The nuns try to get an exorcism approved by Church higher-ups, collect all of the information about demons and tools they need to fight it, and find an appropriately moody location in which to the perform the ritual. In this case, it's an abandoned factory, where the nuns go through the motions we already saw in the prologue and have witnessed far too many times to number in similar movies.

What happened here? Dark Nuns begins with some surprisingly compelling and subversive elements, particularly in the focus on these two characters and their characterization within the context of a familiar tale. Familiarity takes over, though, and overwhelms the very things that might have made the movie different.

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