A prequel to The Conjuring, did The Nun terrify you? Probably not much, right? I would ascribe this to the fact that, although it has plenty of jump-scares, The Nun never has us as invested in its characters as to feel the dread permeate from the screen.
The Nun Film Review
Those in it for special effects will leave the cinema hall somewhat less disappointed since The Nun has plenty of those. But if you were hoping for its story and characters to stay on with you for any reasonable period after exiting the theaters, then that is rather unlikely to happen.
When the Vatican sends a novitiate nun and a priest with an eventful past to put the evil nun Valak, that’s plaguing a cloistered abbey in Romania, back to where it belongs, things soon start to go awry for them. Even with The Nun’s wafer-thin plot, there was scope to achieve more had the director Corin Hardy laid greater emphasis on character development. You get a distinct feeling that the crew spent most of its energy on creating the atmospherics that is undoubtedly bolstered by the quaint yet haunting setting. The latter propels a few scenes to play out somewhat forcefully, but the underwhelming script means that The Nun comes off as a less than rewarding watch. The unsettling ambience without sufficiently exploring the potential nuances offered by the premise doesn’t quite alleviate the shortcomings of the script.
Taissa Farmiga as the uninitiated nun and Demián Bichir as the resolute priest are par for the course, but they are left groping in the dark as the script fumbles. Ironically, the Belgian actor Jonas Bloquet as the bumbling villager provides some comic relief to the otherwise drab screenplay.
The gripe here is that while it is all going rather horribly wrong for the duo, the viewer doesn’t see anything original on screen. The proceedings are utterly devoid of any logic much less originality, and that makes for a less than engaging watch. As an audience, you aren’t looking for a smartly crafted horror flick here. All that one expects going into The Nun is a modicum of rationality and even that evaporates as the story unfolds. Well into The Nun, you are merely looking out for the next cheesy jump scare. And although it does come up as expected, it doesn’t always have the desired impact on the viewer.
To round it up, The Nun isn’t going to give you the shivers that you might have expected seeing the promising trailer and all the hype before its release. If you are a genre fan and don’t miss any opportunity to watch a horror flick or you are an ardent fan of The Conjuring universe, then you might want to give this one a shot. Although, The Nun is probably one of the weakest movies in The Conjuring film series. The others can leave this one alone and wait for it to stream or come on Cable TV.
The Nun film review rates The Nun 
(2.5 / 5)
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