Thankfully not as cynically terrible as bottom-of-the-barrel doll dross Annabelle, The Nun feels like an odd misstep in a horror franchise that’s otherwise felt very carefully controlled. If this wasn’t a Conjuring Universe movie, we’re not sure it would even get a wide theatrical release at all, and we’re frankly surprised that series creator James Wan gave it the sign off. On the way to the Abbey, which looks like a horror movie Hogwarts, they meet lusty local ‘Frenchie’ (Jonas Bloquet), a French Canadian farmer who delivers supplies to the cloistered sisters and discovered the body, who agrees to act as a guide for the two. But when they arrive, the creepy black-shrouded Abbess tells them they must wait until the morning, forcing the two visiting clergy to spend the night… And that’s pretty much it when it comes to plot. From here on out The Nun becomes a barrage of set pieces stacking up monsters, demons and apparitions which would be at home in an episode from Tales From The Crypt. Hardy mixes his gothic backdrop with lashings of folk horror and an almost early Sam Raimi-esque genre exuberance – which would be a lot of fun were the dialogue not so leaden and the plot so thin. To Hardy’s credit, The Nun doesn’t take itself very seriously. Unlike the other movies in the franchise, it’s not portentous and obsessed with convincing the audience that the events we’re watching actually happened – The Nun is camply funny and it’s clearly meant to be. Fun one-liners and the frequent appearances of Valak at the end of various long corridors (definitely this demon’s MO) feel like cheeky winks and stop The Nun from feeling purely like a crass cash in. That doesn’t make it in any way good movie though. And as part of the Conjuring Universe it feels totally off. If the Conjuring movies are trying to convince us that some of this creepy crap happened, for example, where does that leave us with the subplot of Father Burke who has apparently in the past exorcised a child TO DEATH? Dauberman wrote the screenplay for the terrible Annabelle, and the not terrible Annabelle: Creation, so if his work in the Conjuring Universe follows the ‘a good one, then a terrible one’ pattern then this might at least bode well for his work on the next currently untitled Annabelle instalment. But, until then, how many times should you go and see this movie? The clue’s in the title… The Nun is out now.
