THE NUN II - Mark Reviews Movies

The Nun II, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 8, 2023

If one cares more about atmosphere and scares than story, The Nun II is an improvement over its predecessor. When we're talking about a movie that revolves around a demon in the form of a terrifying and pale-faced nun that can emerge from and disappear into shadows, is there really anything more important than atmosphere and scares?

Director Michael Chaves, helming his third entry in the horror universe set in the world of The Conjuring and its sequels, puts that proposition to the test for the first half and a bit more of this sequel to 2018's The Nun. That spin-off movie undid much of what made the eponymous figure, played by Bonnie Aarons, so frightening in the first place. By explaining so much of the origin and mythology of the enigmatic character, that movie forgot that the scariest things are the ones we don't understand.

The back story of the demon Valak is probably the least interesting thing about this supernatural figure, whose brief appearance in The Conjuring 2 was so memorably frightening because the entity came out of nowhere—quite literally—with a look and actions that did everything that needed to be done to make the point clear. This demonic nun is one scary creature.

Some credit, then, is due to Chaves and the sequel's team of screenwriters—made up of Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and Akela Cooper—for forgoing much of any plot for so long in this entry. There is one, of course, having to do with the Nun's return, as it has possessed a character from the previous movie and is making a murderous trek across Europe, and the eventual attempt of the protagonist of the preceding story to once again stop the demon.

The script sets up that inevitable conflict, but instead of going through the routine steps to arrive at it, the movie just allows the Nun to haunt and kill in a small French town, specifically within a boarding school filled with vulnerable kids. Once the plot does finally come into play, though, the whole thing just falls back on everything that went wrong in the sequel's predecessor.

For a while at least, Chaves and the screenwriters mean some business. The opening sequence, for example, is set in a church in different small town in France, where an altar boy and the parish priest encounter the Nun with traumatizing or fatal consequences. Quickly, the filmmaker establishes an air of mystery to the Nun's ways, letting a stray ball going into and out of a shadowy hallway do enough misdirection for a scare elsewhere in the frame, and allowing silence to do the rest of the work.

The Nun's actual first appearance here is fairly chilling, while the first death is just over-the-top and grisly enough to offer up some dread. There are a couple of times when Chaves shows he understands the wicked appeal of this figure, simply allowing the Nun to stand in open view after some slowly revealing motion. Yes, there are jump scares, too, but when it comes to this character, there's little that's more frightening about it than to anticipate its appearance, only for it to gradually appear exactly where we think it will. One clever scene, involving the blowing pages of rows of magazines, is a particularly neat trick, both technically and as an act of revelation.

About half of the early narrative is set at the school, where Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), who was possessed by the demon near the end of the last movie, works as the resident handyman. He and Kate (Anna Popplewell), one of the teachers, have a chaste little potential romance going on, championed by the teacher's daughter and student Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey). Neither of them or anyone else in the school or even, for that matter, Maurice knows that the Nun is within him. A local delivery boy discovers that fact too late, although, after teasing that no character is safe in this story with that shock of a scene, the movie seems to go out of its way to break that promise.

Meanwhile, Sr. Irene (Taissa Farmiga) has transferred to a new abbey, where no one knows she's the nun who's rumored to have stopped the Nun three years prior. After having some visions of her dead mother and Maurice, a representative from the Vatican arrives, insisting that Irene hunt down the demon and put an end to it once and for all. Fellow nun Debra (Storm Reid) tags along, hoping to see a miracle yet somehow only believing after witnessing a particular supernatural event—despite spending her entire time at the school being chased and attacked by a couple of demons.

Yes, the entirety of the third act becomes that, as well as a hunt for some holy relic (If the potential quality of an actor can be judged by the conviction with which something like "the eyes of St. Lucy" is spoken, Farmiga could be one of our best one day) and another showdown with the Nun. It's not as if the empty excuses for suspense and scares of everything before that in The Nun II is sound storytelling, but the repetitious setup-and-scare approach with this supernatural character is much more satisfying than the loud, generic bombast that follows.

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