Sarae Ticeahkie
A&E Editor
@SylviaSeeks
On Sept. 6, the highly anticipated prequel to James Wan’s “The Conjuring” hit theatres worldwide.
The supernatural horror mystery “The Nun” brought in highly 54 million opening weekend, but had a highly disappointing premiere.
In 2016, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema announced the spin off to 2013’s “The Conjuring” and 2016’s “The Conjuring 2”.
In 2017, film director and screenwriter Director Corin Hardy, who made his debut co-writing the 2015 horror film “The Hallow”, announced that he signed on to direct the prequel, and completely rewrote the screenplay for the movie.
The horror of a movie did not meet the standards that the Conjuring Universe has set.
It started off with a promising scene for the prequel, but it later lacked the twisted horror the previous movies are known for.
“The Nun” begins with some backstory and connection to the other movies, then began unclear narrative for the rest of the movie.
Using the traditional creepy low-lit lighting throughout the movie did nothing but make it incredibly hard to see what was going on.
The movie is set in 1952 Romania, where the Carta Monastery is haunted by an unholy presence that killed two nuns who beloning to the convent.
The Vatican heard about the death of the nuns and sought a problem-solving priest and young novitiate nun.
Experienced in demonic exorcisms, Father Burke (Demian Bichir), and foreseeing Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), younger sister of “The Conjuring” star (Vera Farmiga), travel to the abbey of St. Carta to uncover the mysterious evil that caused death to a nun and suicide for the other.
During their travels, they meet up with the farmer Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), a peasant from a nearby village who found the hanging nun. Frenchie guides them to the Abbey.
This is where the jump scares and chills are supposed to happen but don’t.
The movie just gets stagnant.
Hardy includes the basic decaying hands grabbing people, the turning of upside-down crosses and nuns flying all over the place.
The director overly uses these basic scare tactics to make up for the lack of maintining the creepy and tense atmosphere Wan did so well in “The Conjuring” movies.
All the scare tactics must have been possessed too.
The movie had so much potential to tell an interesting back story, but instead Hardy decided to create new stories to potray the one everyone has been waiting to see; Valaks’ (Bonnie Aarons) story.
The demonic nun is the iconic villain linking the movies together.
Father Burke gets haunted by a young boy, who he had performed an exorcism on in the past, but never gave closure of that story or how it is related to the events in the movie.
Then, we are told the Abbey got bombed during World War II, which released the demon from an opening in the ground that lead to the depths of hell.
This causing the unholy activity.
It really just caused an unholy mess for the movie.
Sister Irene’s backstory has a better connection with finding out what is haunting the Abbey. It’s her visions that directed them to the origin of evil.
The demonic nun Valak.
The demonic nun is ironically the one savor to this prequel.
In the ending scene, Valak manages to possess and enter the farmer Frenchie, which then alluded to a scene in “The Conjuring”.
Ironically, the beginning and ending of the movie, which are short scenes from the previous movies, are the only scenes that shed light on the storyline.