The Nun Review

With The Nun being advertised as 'The darkest chapter in The Conjuring universe' I can only presume this is in reference to the lighting, not the tone of its subject matter. The film starts well enough, quickly establishing an ambience of dread which persists right up to the end of the first act: it's at this point you realise the filmmakers have opted for the 'quiet, quiet, boo!' approach after all.

The Nun features a strong cast all-round: Demián Bichir gives a stellar performance as Father Burke, as does Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene, a novitiate nun with clairvoyant abilities. Both are sent to Cârta Abbey in Romania to investigate the apparent suicide of a cloistered nun; recruiting Jonas Bloquet's 'Frenchie' as a guide along the way. Whilst the performances from the cast are commendable, the characters themselves are badly written and cliched; the priest with a tormented past, the young, fresh-faced uninitiated novice: all have been done before and done better.

The film's lack of originality and reluctance to break the franchise's platitudinous modus operandi ultimately makes The Nun feel just as bland and formulaic.

A real shame too, as the film had huge potential: Valak, the demon nun has a terrifying visage – without the need for vacuous and loud jump scares – and seeing it silhouetted against what little light exists within the claustrophobic stone-walls of the ancient abbey is the stuff of nightmares. And whilst people have complained about the film's lack of colour, this isn't something that bothered me, in fact, I thought the cinematography was brilliant.

The sweeping vistas of the abbey and its grounds are spectacularly handled, and the strolling graveyard shots reminded me of the scenes at Eel Marsh House in the Woman in Black; contributing immensely to the early build-up of dread and despair, and serving as a strikingly grim introduction to the infernal abbey: while the dimly lit catacombesque interior masks its spectral inhabitants in an eerie, perpetual darkness; ensuring we only see what the film wants us to see. The Nun is a visually dark and beautiful film.

Unfortunately, the narrative is a mess, unimaginative at best, and features one of the worst exposition dumps I've seen in a long time.

Just over half-way through the film, Sister Irene questions one of the abbey's nuns, Sister Oana, about the recent suicide: after not getting far she asks about the abbey's history, something we know nothing about, other than it has apparently been erased from the history books: then, in a 30-second cascade of verbal diarrhoea, we're told absolutely everything, just like that.

Learning the abbey's history should have been exciting. It should have been revealed through snippets of information: understated lines of dialogue, subtle visual clues, found documents, that sort of thing. And what's worse, it's not even interesting once it is unloaded on us. It's boring, and frankly, lazily written.

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Verdict

The Nun isn't a bad film by any means, but I found it incredibly disappointing. I have no doubt it'll have a huge taking at the box office, and if you're a fan of The Conjuring films you'll likely get along well with this, and I do genuinely think it's one of the best films of the franchise. But for those of us who had hoped for more, The Nun exists merely as another (admittedly beautiful looking) generic horror.

6/10