La monja

Directed by Luis de la Madrid and produced by Brian Yuzna's Spanish label Fantastic Factory, The Nun is a modestly budgeted, reasonably effective horror that starts off like a supernatural I Know What You Did Last Summer (the '97 slasher is even referenced in this movie), but ends with a neat psychological twist. It's by no means perfect, suffering from some iffy CGI effects and a few dodgy performances from its largely European cast, but it does deliver in terms of creepy atmosphere, and benefits from a couple of fun, gory death scenes.

The story, by Jaume Balagueró (The Darkness), sees a young woman, Eve (Anita Briem), travelling to Spain with her friends Julia (Belén Blanco) and Joel (Alistair Freeland) after she witnesses her mother being murdered by a ghostly nun. In Barcelona, Eve searches for clues to help her understand what happened, her investigation leading to the now closed Catholic boarding school attended by her mother 18 years earlier. As she delves deeper into the mystery, Eve begins to suspect that her mother was killed by the vengeful spirit of Sister Ursula, a strict nun at the school who disappeared shortly before its closure.

With the ghostly nun only appearing in water, there is quite a lot of not-quite-convincing digital trickery involved, but the nun herself is suitably scary looking, and kills off her victims in some satisfyingly inventive ways, the best being a fatal elevator ride (the lift severing the victim's arms) and a decapitation by falling sheet of glass. Other less memorable deaths include a slashed throat, an impalement on a broken pipe, and the crucifixion of a woman with big hooters and a gimpy leg (the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away).

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

There aren't enough horror movies featuring nuns. In fact, this is the first one I have seen. I was really hoping for something good, but I got a Spanish film that cut out the middleman and made a Hollywood remake as the original film. Sounds complicated, but it's not hard to comprehend if you think about it. Hollywood cannot remake this film as it has already been done.

Now, Icelandic beauty Anita Briem, in her first film, and Belén Blanco (The Whore and The Whale) make this film worth the time spent, but it could have been so much more.

That is not to say that the elevator scene wasn't great, but we've seen this film over and over without the nun. That's not enough to make it worthwhile, and, as for expected nudity in a horror flick, this one had nun.

I don't usually like to comment on the acting in a movie, because it is the one thing that people who have agenda against a film will go after. In this movie, I will make an exception. The acting in this film are below average all around. I mean halfway into the film, I wonder how the hell did the producer and/or the director gets around casting such an ensemble of people who can't act. Even-though the production value was good, the ill written story just compounded on top of the bad performance of the actors, and there is even a half-hearted attempts to a twist to the ending of the movie, which ends up quite confusing. Is all the Spanish horror films this disappointing?

This week's surprise screening at GV turned out to be the horror movie The Nun (La Monja). Seriously, I think that horror movies should try and come up with more imaginative titles, even though the story's about the character as described in the title. Who knows, soon we'll have spinoffs like The Monk, The Priest, and others belonging to various religious sects.

The basic premise goes very simply, that a ghoul dressed up in a Nun garb (so that it can lay claim to the title) goes around killing ex-convent girls. There seemed to be some sort of conspiracy involved, as the daughter of one of the victims, Eva (played by an eye candy Icelandic Anita Briem), goes on to discover, with the help of a few good friends, like a rip off of I Know What You Did Last Summer (mentioned also, by the way).

So as the body count increases, it's a race against time for our emotionally scarred (aren't they always?) heroine to uncover the truth and save the day. Delving into the sins of the mothers, the movie did the unthinkable, that with a dream sequence as the introduction. I hate dream sequences as it's a pretty cheap technique if not done correctly, and there are a couple of them in the movie.

In part, the movie played at times like Ju-On gone wrong with the plenty of Dark Water references, and they could have retitled this Unholy Water, for the circumstances and plot points in the movie. However, there are plot holes abound, so don't be looking into the storyline too deeply. You'd come to expect the standard textbook twists towards the end about the sadistic nun, and sets which look like they can rival recent Thai horror movie Dorm.

The acting's pretty forgettable, with the cast speaking in perfect heavily accented English. And since most of them are pleasing to the eye, the story must weave in a love scene in the middle of a witch-hunt. What gives? Hello, got hantu, still got mood ah? Then again, the ghoul is a pretty cheap animated/SFX which has a built in AI of popping up every now and then, in various fashion, just to elicit screams from timid audiences. The characters also break every unwritten rule in the Do-Nots in horror lore, so you know and expect their just desserts.

Can you possibly enjoy this movie? Sure you can. Just ensure that you're watching it in a full house (should be easy, since local folks are suckers for anything remotely horrific), and laugh at those who are so jumpy they scream at every "frightening" scene. It's pretty fun, and adds to the atmosphere, besides what's going on the screen. Surround sound doesn't even come close.

Think of it as watching an episode of Scooby Doo without the wisecracks, and it's a pity that the gory moments in the movie had to be censored for a PG rating. Those could possibly have been the best bits, now left rotting on the censor's floor board.

Wow are you guys tough on this film. Granted it was "I know What You Did Last Summer" with a Nun. But the Nun was pretty scary and the film maintained a disturbingly eerie feel. There is something about the European sensibility that gives this kind of film a moody realism. It was a little odd that everyone had Spanish accents I thought the acting was pretty natural. The special water effects were pure trailer material. However, I felt let down by the end of the movie. It seemed rushed. And I'm sure it wasn't. This was also the work of a first time director. I thought he did a great job.

That said, I have seen far worse films.

I'm also dieing to see Yuzna's "What Lies Beneath". I enjoyed to book and was sorry to see his film isn't available on DVD.