The Nun

The darkest chapter form conjuring universe but not the best and not even better than conjuring

the beginning of the film feels promising, but the more behind the plot the more strange and there are some things that seem "forced"

this film feels so dark and too many jump scare

I think, the rating of this film is better than annabelle but no better than conjuring

I've seen a few stinkers of horrors that certainly deserve 1 or 2 starts, but come on, The Nun deserves better than that. Sure it doesn't have the finesse of The Conjuring films, the plot is a little thin and the scares do rely quite heavily on the tried and tested loud jump scares, but:

It has great camera work Very good set pieces and great atmosphere Good acting Great effects And it does make you jump outta your seat

If you bear all of that in mind and are not expecting anything else, then you'll have a great time.

It seems like, in The Conjuring 2, the writers just thought: "a monster in a nun costume - that seems really cool!" Then, when they try to build a story around it, they can't get the square peg to fit in the round hole. It's a nun monastery in Romania. And a demon called Valak. But why is he running around in a nun costume? That story doesn't get developed enough. A good ghost story always have a mystique and history, but this movie doesn't deliver in that aspect. Instead they seem just to rely on jump scares and cheap thrills.

Let's begin with saying that the movie is definitely still worth the time to see. As there are a few moments where The Nun is portrayed in such a way that you do feel how great and powerful it is, and the music during these scenes (trust me, you will recognise them when you see them) is incredible. You'll feel hopeless, just as the characters at that time, but unfortunately these moments are scarce.

As human being, we find darkness scary, we hate it because we cannot see properly and thus find ourselves in the unknown. This is what drives a good horror movie, it is why the first Paranormal Activity was such a success for example. The horror of things happening, but not knowing what it is or where it is. The Nun fails to deliver this horror of the unknown. As we, in almost all scenes, see what it is that should terrify us, in great and gory detail. And while I love a tip of the hat to a more old school type of horror (more gore and monstrous feelings), I do not like how The Nun delivers it.

The amount of times we see a close up of the face of the nun is insane, and takes away the fear that this character had left us in during the Conjuring movies. It was the lack of screentime and the darkness surrounding this character that made her so extremely scary and interesting in those movies. It reminded me of the Devil's face in the original Exorcist movie. We don't see it often, but when we see it it terrifies us, because we cannot quite tell all the characteristics of its face, and it is always surrounded by darkness. The Nun is blatantly obvious, and her screaming in the camera makes it feel more like you're watching The Mummy, than The Nun.

Then there's the writing, the addition of comic relief is a good idea, but the timing is always off and rarely funny. The storyline is a bit basic, a gateway to hell, again, a demon needs a body, again, our past haunts us, again; it delivers nothing we haven't seen already. And I don't mind that, but then at least deliver it with tenacity. The jump scares feel as though they know that the audience knows its coming, so they just try to come at you from a different position than you expect: e.g., camera does a full 360, we expect something to happen, it doesn't and then something drops from above.

No, the movie disappoints. The story is basic, the timing of humor is laughable and the excessive amount of screentime - for that which petrified us with hardly any in the Conjuring movies - makes the Nun into something we hoped it wouldn't be. And unfortunately the great scenery, actually horrifying scenes and amazing soundtrack just can't lift this movie beyond 'just another horror movie'.

Starts out mysterious and creepy and concludes with a nifty, direct connection with the first Conjuring movie. Sadly, along the way, the writers give into horror cliches and undermine what could have been an above average prequel: people needlessly separating from each other to wander alone down dark, evil passages; a heroine who screams approximately seven times too often; and, that desperate refuge of weak horror scripts, zombified corpse ghost revanent demon things. Writing this to get to the required 600. How long did it take a committee to come up with that random number? Okay I need four more, there that did it.