The Nun: La vocazione del male

Preface: I'm not the biggest fan of the Conjuring series as a whole.

Overall, The Nun was a pretty good movie. The film was shot wonderfully, locations were beautiful, color was perfect, and FX were spot on. That being said... for a demonic style horror film, I really prefer a little more background. With films out like Hereditary that are based in real, historically accurate lore, the bar has been set higher in that genre. The Nun's plot seemed rather thrown together to me.

On the plus side... Taissa Farmiga is an amazing actor and was brilliant. I almost give her full credit for me liking the film as much as I did. I really believe she is a staple to the horror genre. Bonnie Aarons is amazing as the Nun as well. I do wish they would use a little prosthetics on her to keep the nun from looking so much like her. After her role in these films I don't know if i'll ever be able to see her as anything but an evil, demonic nun. Overall... I give 6 out of 10.

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.

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.

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.

Maybe not the most unpredictable and finest plot. However the movie is characterised by a truly scary atmosphere. The background music evokes awe and the jump scares keep the audience in constant alertness. For me it comes up to the standards of a good Horror movie.