The Nun

The American film The Nun was rather disappointing for me. Instead of playing on the atmosphere, which could be very dense, it ends up playing more on the impression of how the portrayed will appear. It's as if the film wanted to be a spectacle rather than a good horror film, which strikes me as a shame. Suddenly you have the feeling that you've seen what you're watching elsewhere and that it's not really all that imaginative. (29/03/2019)

This is a generic commercial horror and a quick-brewing franchise, whose only goal seems to have been to take more cash out of the audience’s pockets, and to get a demonic nun into the living room of the Warren couple. The script is therefore just a dark padding without any real story or surprises, but it is blessed with a multitude of tropes such as ‘We’ll move the camera to the side, but then move it right back to reveal a loud jump scare.’ I was most frightened when I checked the time and saw there were 40 minutes left. (06/01/2019)

Three stars, grudgingly. The screenplay must have been written by an automatic horror generator and it’s surprising that Warners can’t manage their dark universe better on this aspect, but for the consumers it’s enough, I guess. What scared me the most about The Nun is that the same person is credited with the screenplay of the second part of It. I hope they do a better job there. If there’s anything that deserves praise in The Nun is the choice of location and the setting in an old castle as a whole (the Hunedoara castle in Romania); the ancient corridors, cellars, chapels and graveyards do create atmosphere. Unfortunately, the creators were incapable of doing much more with it. Which quite surprised me, Hardy’s previous film, The Hallow, was brilliant. Overall, it’s just fat and salt-free, with a plot that fails to be engaging (not that there is much of it anyway: the characters come, then hang around for while and walk in circles, then one of them literally explains what’s going on, which is followed by a chase with the evil nun, the end), the characters are uninteresting; a scary movie for kids. In a year when we’ve already seen a fairly above-average number of well-made horror films of various sub-genres, these mainstream flicks need to be better. If you’re looking for a good tribute to the old Hammer films, better go for A Cure for Wellness or The Woman in Black. (06/09/2018)

It’s well crafted and packed with ghostly attractions, an addition to a popular universe that never gets boring and that brings some fresh air to its exhausted premise, at least with the setting. However, it’s also crammed with the expected clichés, predictable and incomprehensibly downplayed by moments or one-liners that feel like out of a second-rate action flick. The titular ghost looks cool, but its inability to deal with only three determined adversaries (of which one is a young, squirrelly novice nun and another a village yokel with a shotgun) gradually weakens its aura. Solid work, but it would have been a lot better with a more inaccessible and properly bloody decadent tone. 60% (21/03/2019)

High hopes were pinned on The Nun this year. Horror films been hugely successful bot at the box-office and with audiences, but The Nun has been a slight flop in terms of audience. The current 65% isn't a downright disaster, but compared to The Conjuring it is a downward slump, but still more successful than Annabelle. The cinema was packed though, so at least commercially I hope the film succeeds. Although I was slightly skeptical, there was no proper trailer at all, in fact I only watched the one minute teaser, in the end I am both pleasantly surprised and pleased. The Nun has the advantage over the competition of being set in a beautiful Romanian castle featuring nuns, which I find much more appealing than a simple house with a family and a demon. The film picks up the pace quite quickly and there is no long wait for the haunted attractions, which is a very good thing. The Nun is also unexpectedly grittier and darker than I was hoping for compared to other mainstream horror movies. There are quite a few jump-scares, but only one worked for me, but the atmosphere itself pulled me in decently and the finale is set up perfectly. Taissa Farmiga is charming in a similar way to her mother and they nicely tie the film together with the The Conjuring at the end. What's a bit of a bummer is that the demon Valak only draws attention to himself at the end, the rest of the film he either can't be seen or there is another evil at work, which I take as a minus as Valak is a great demonic character. Story-wise it could have been more substantial, but that doesn't bother me so much as I haven't seen a better horror movie with nuns so far. For me, a decent job. 80%. (08/09/2018)