|
|
THE NUN (2018)
Director: Corin Hardy Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons, Ingrid Bisu, Charlotte Hope, Sandra Teles, August Maturo, Jack Falk, Lynnette Gaza, Ani Sava, Michael Smiley MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:36 Release Date: 9/7/18 |
|
Review by Mark Dujsik | September 6, 2018 The demonic nun was, perhaps, the scariest thing in The Conjuring 2, which is saying something, considering that the entire film was one, quite effective attempt after another to provide some chilling thing. That demon sort of gets its own movie with The Nun, which is the latest entry in the growing franchise revolving around the less-prevalent entities in The Conjuring and its sequel. The creepy doll came first (and then a second time), and now we get the creepy nun. One imagines a room filled with studio executives just throwing out the names of ancillary characters from those first film and secretly hoping that another sequel in the main series will provide another excuse—sorry, character—to keep this universe of horror movies afloat. In theory, they chose correctly with the Nun character (played by Bonnie Aarons), which passed over walls in the form of and came into existence out of a shadow, only to reveal a pale face with black lips and dark rings around its eyes. Its mere appearance was terrifying, partially because it's such a simple concept. The general appearance—of the basic white and black of the demon's facial features matching the color scheme of its habit—is scary, and then there's the added level of taking an appearance meant to represent the holy and twisting it into something profane. It's simple, yes, but that simplicity allows us to put our own thoughts and fears into the character. This spin-off, though, explains the character's origin, which turns out to be pretty generic, and transforms the demon into a full monster, complete with loud growls, capable of hurling someone backwards, and computer-aided distortions of its face in key scenes. It's almost a given at this point that knowing less about some evil presence is better, because nothing is more frightening than the unknown. Screenwriter Gary Dauberman doesn't appear to agree with that idea. He has turned the Nun into something comprehendible and, consequently, less frightening. The story is set in the 1950s, mainly at a castle in the hills of Romania that became an abbey some centuries ago. After a trip down a dark hallway filled with crosses and the violent disappearance of another nun, a young nun, aware of some evil presence slowly pursuing her, commits suicide at the abbey. A bishop at the Vatican calls in Fr. Burke (Demián Bichir), a well-regarded "miracle hunter," to investigate what happened. For help, they assign him Sr. Irene (Taissa Farmiga, who—unless that revelation is for a future sequel—is not playing the character we expect her to be playing). Irene, a novitiate who has not taken her final vows, has had visions since childhood, and this cursed abbey is a perfect place for more. The story has the priest, the nun, and a local farmer named Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) trying to figure out what old hell has been unleashed within the abbey. The location itself is quite a sight. Sitting on a remote hill and surrounded by a courtyard, as well as an entire forest, decorated with crosses, the castle is dim and grimy, attracting a fair amount of fog in its lower corridors. The darkness in this place is pitch black, and that prologue features the fairly intimidating image of a nun's black habit merging into the darkness of a forbidden room. There's not much of a mystery here, since we pretty much know what happened to the dead nun at the movie's start, so we're left waiting for the only real mystery: how the Nun came into the natural world. A flashback explains it, although the tale itself is far less interesting than the initial sight of a mad, murderous duke, who has hanged some blood-dripping bodies upside-down over a portal to Hell. Director Corin Hardy certainly has an imagination and an eye for such stark grotesqueries. While investigating, Burke is buried alive (Dauberman and Hardy add a new slant to the horror of this scenario by adding some presence scratching at the outside of the coffin), and the other nuns in the abbey behave quite strangely. The abbess sits on a throne, surrounded by tombs and enshrouded by an opaque veil. Frenchie has an encounter with the dead nun in the woods, and Irene is locked away in the room from which that same nun leapt—only to receive a visitor, whose ill intent is announced by a crucifix turning, unseen, on a wall behind her. All of this is fairly predictable stuff, and while Hardy clearly is far more concerned with creating atmosphere and tension than with offering cheap scares, there's something distancing about his technique. Some of that is the screenplay, which never makes the leap from a hollow idea—taking an established character and creating a story that's an excuse to show more of said character—to a story with merits of its own. Most of it, though, is that The Nun is too busy explaining the ways, the origin, and the myth of its eponymous character, and in the process, it forgets why the Nun was scary in the first place. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)
|
(for
terror, violence, and disturbing/bloody images)
