"Next time do use the shotgun."
The clip show recap at the start always makes me cringe. Not even one scene of this 1h36 movie even comes close to any of the scenes with Valak in The Conjuring 2. The Jumpscares are cheap and silly, so cliché and it's borderline laughable at times. I like American Horror Story alum Taissa Farmiga (sister of Vera Farmiga) but I'll admit this is not her best. That goes for every actor in this movie actually. Looks like they weren't generous with the number of takes. Terrible dialogue delivery. Valak lost some badassness in this.
It's not totally irredeemable though. It's at least very entertaining there's always something happening on-screen. Barely any setup really, it's straight to the good stuff we want to see. The setting with the nuns in a church is probably the best we could have had. The religious aspect is the biggest praise i'll give it. I would have taken even more religious stuff and lore because that's what kinda sets it apart from the regular ghost story. The effects look decent. The zombie-ish entity in the cemetary was my favorite part.
Overall not the worst horror movie ever but damn does it look bad after watching other movies in the same franchise. The Nun doesn't offer much as a spin-off in comparison to Annabelle.
Not sure why this movie gets such a bad rap; I enjoyed it quite a bit, myself. It should be noted here, however, for the diehard "horror" aficionados that I would consider "The Nun" more of a suspense movie than actual horror. Granted, there are some scary "jump out of your seat" scenes, but overall, it's the overwhelming feeling of suspense and "you know it's coming" that makes this movie a good watch, IMO. Contrary to a lot of other reviews, I didn't find it "plodding" or slow...okay, well, yeah at times, it was pretty sluggish...but as an overall story, I found it a decent watch. The other movies in the franchise will scare the bejabbers out of you; this one only does that in one or two places, which is why I feel it should be seen more as a great psychological suspense movie. The scenery and overall cinematography was outstanding and the acting was - again, just my opinion - quite good. I'm watching the entire franchise again from the beginning, so maybe watching this first skewed my opinion, compared to others, but I found this to be a very watchable movie so long as you don't go into it expecting true horror (translation: not a lot of gore). Good enough that I'll watch it again! :thumbsup_tone2:
I started the film on Netflix quite impartially and without great expectations. I had seen Conjuring 1 once, part 2 not at all, and generally I did not know that this was supposed to be a kind of coherent franchise. The film got off to a very promising start - an abandoned monastery in the middle of Romania, home to some ancient devil-conjuring.
The characters are mostly decals without much character development across the length of the film. At the beginning, the priest made a good impression of a solid exorcist personality, but became increasingly anxious because of his perceived powerlessness against evil. The characterization of the young, mostly inexperienced nun is cliché-olé and not worth mentioning. The young Franco-Canadian (sic) is still the most exciting figure, one expects his death right at the beginning.
In the first two thirds of the film there are several beautiful jumpscare scenes that have frightened me, even if they were expected in tension. The effects are good, only the idea that all figures except the three mentioned are part of this creepy charade can be gotten very quickly at the beginning and you will not be able to get rid of it later until it is dissolved. If you like beautiful scare effects and like to be scared, you can definitely see the film. Only in the last third do you fight quite openly against the evil in the monastery and the shock effect quickly subsides due to the frequency of the effects. 5/10
Like the first Annabelle, you expect an origin story and only get some meh in the middle story. It's still about Valach, but why was it here in the beginning, there's a 20 seconds summoning explanation and that's it. So it has a nun form, because it's in a nunnery, but it's taking another body at the end, so there's no reason for it to still be in the same form in the Conjuring movie.
Major disappointing thing in the movie: most paranormal things happening finally turn out as mere illusions with no consequence at all. It's quite common in this kind of movies, but just once or twice, and not through the whole thing, here it's almost all the time.
Otherwise the characters are interesting, the main trio with the hardened exorcist, new girl on the block and comic relief peasant wotks quite well. All the other nuns are anecdotal. But the demon has so much potential and is really underused. It seems to be super powerful at times, but almost doesn't do anything ever.
The whole final act turns ridiculous. Girl instantly turns powered up almost to saint level, and is clearly the only one that can do something. But just to be sure, they split in the dark catacombs to look for the demon. What ? Then everybody almost die but not really at least once. Predictable, not really well done, boring. Clearly half of the FX money went in the final fight, it shouldn't have.
Review by Alan Stingyal PigottBlockedParentSpoilers2018-09-07T22:13:49Z— updated 2021-06-14T21:46:26Z
A nun (maybe Marilyn Mason) with bad gas, burps her way around an old convent, and is stopped with a large amount of water and some red Alka-Seltzer.
Remember how the minions in Despicble me were funny, & the announcement of them having theit own movie filled you mouth with... "oh FFS! They're comic relief, they can't hold a story!" Rants?
Well conjuring 2 had this awesomely creepy bastard Nun popping up & she was the best part of that film.
They announced she would get her own flick & you member those 6 spooky parts from c2 & think, yeah that could be really good....
Well it's not, it's nun too good, it's another minions movie.
Half way through it becomes a mini zombie movie, the thing the ghost wants could easily have been done on the first night, but it faffs about opening doors & pointlessly burying a guy. Our heroes, I assume are under a bit of hypnosis type of magic (but it's not shown, so maybe they are just daft selfish gits) just fuck off & follow the slightest noise.
None of the scares worked (cinema I was in had the audio too loud, so the loud bits were off the charts, scared my hearing will be affected).
The nun wasn't anything near as creepy as what she was in conjuring 2.
A god awful exmachina moment save comes in exactly when you expect it
'bells were attached to coffins incase of accidental premature burial" (hmm someones gonna be buried & ring the bell) this setup to someone's nasty underground entrapment shoots its load within 10 minutes! (what, don't they think the audience will remember this nearer the end of the film, where it should have been used?)
A ghost kid being followed in the cemetery had me giggling as it was like a bad game of peekaboo.
*warning Many Nuns get harmed in this film,
Quite hilariously & mostly at once