La nonne

One of the finest initiatives in the world of horror movies (since the beginning of this new millennium) must be the collaboration between Brian Yuzna and Julio Fernandez, when they founded the Spannish production company Fantastic Factory. With great enthusiasm I've been following the movies they've produced since 2001. They might not be masterpieces, but for the moment I've enjoyed every single one of them. Even the so-called "bad" ones.

To my surprise I enjoyed THE NUN much more than I thought I would. It really does rise above the level of ordinary (supernatural) teen-slasher movies. Actually, calling this a teen-slasher movie would rather be an insult. Because in THE NUN the teen-agers are doing the investigating and it are in fact adult women who find their gory death. 17 years ago a group of young girls in a sinister Catholic school were being tyrannized by a nun, called Ursula. After a serious incident (which was kept secret from the public for many years), the nun disappeared and the school was closed down. Now, 17 years later, the girls are all adult women and start dying one by one. That's right, Ursula is back... in an unholy way.

The movie moves at a decent pace and there are quite a lot of things to be discovered. Whether they are plausible/predictable or not didn't matter to me, because it kept me going. And this is still a horror movie, by the way, so a little suspension of disbelief always makes them work a little better. The cast consists mostly out of unknown Spannish actors & actresses, but the acting was pretty good and their English even better. Needless to say that the girls in this flick are nice to look at. The production values were rather excellent for this type of movie. It looked good, was pretty stylish and a lot of care went into the set-design (especially the old, run-down Catholic school). And what about our Unholy Nun? Well, she truly was a scary and terrifying creation. She's able to manifest herself through water, and the effects were pretty darn effective, using a perfect mixture of CGI and a real actress with creepy make-up. The way she moved in certain scenes was well-choreographed and sometimes even send a shiver down my spine. And the way she kills is pretty damn gory, and the pattern in her killings (which is discovered later in the movie) is even refreshingly original. And then there are a few other things to be discovered... The ending itself comes rather abrupt and isn't exactly a big climax. But still, even though my first feelings were sort of mixed, I did like the ending.

The only thing I didn't really like were those two little verbal inside-jokes about THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. They should have just left those remarks out of the movie. And mind you, besides those two "witty" references THE NUN (thankfully) has absolutely nothing else to do with those two movies. For one thing, the plot has more to offer.

I was a bit surprised when I saw the - at the time of writing this - 4.2/10 rating for THE NUN. And on the other hand I sort of expected it. It's easy to bash this movie (especially for non-horror lovers), because the plot maybe is a little too ambitious (making it seem ridiculous to so-called intellectuals), or it has a bunch of unknown Spannish actors so they can't relate to the characters. But I gave it a solid 7/10 because the film-makers really made an effort to produce a good-looking and effective scary/bloody movie and at least attempted to tell a decent story with it. Personally, I think this Spannish production is better (and certainly more enjoyable) than a lot of other more recent American theatrical horror-releases, like for example DARKNESS FALLS, BOOGEYMAN, and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (to name only a few and include a re-make).

On a final note: THE NUN has absolutely nothing to do with the nunsploitation-genre, like one other commentator here mentioned, even though some remotely familiar aspects of that notorious genre can be found in it. And no, it has nothing to do with nudity.

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.

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?

So you know when you're TOTALLY into a movie because the trailer was really good and the movie actually seems to be living up to what the trailer promised...and you're freaked out because it's genuinely creepy and impressed because it's kind of a way cooler movie than you'd expect to see in a direct to DVD movie these days and so you just can't wait for the climax because you need that pay-off... and then the thing goes limp in the last 10 minutes and there's no climax or rendering of where entire the story just went wrong...so you're totally let down and kinda peeved off...? That's what THE NUN did for me last night....

Everything Brian Yuzna (producer) touches lately seems to just end...not conclude...it just stops with some illogical reason for all the cool shite that just took up 90 minutes of your life....

Cool Fx. Decent acting. Moody. Scary at times. Sexy. Then it sucks at the end.

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.