Movie Madness: The Nun (2018)

(Available on Tubi)

Which is scarier: a nun or a clown?

We begin with a flashback (flash forward?) to the part in The Conjuring 2 when Lorraine Warren and her daughter see the Nun down the hallway (super creepy) and Lorraine is having visions of the Nun killing Ed. Then we flash back in time and we are at a nunnery in Romania. One nun is being dragged into a room by something unholy (one would think it was unholy, anyway…) and she gives another nun a key. And then that nun hangs herself. And then this French grocery delivery guy who is pretty cute finds her hanging, and it is pretty gross.

Then we cut to the Vatican, and these priest guys are telling this other priest guy to go check out this nunnery, and that he should pick up this novitiate chick (which is someone preparing to be a nun but is not officially a nun yet, which I sound really smart for knowing but it was in the movie) on his way there.

Their first stop is to visit the cute French grocery guy to ask him what happened and ask him to take them up there. And he does. And they are going to see the cellar where he put the nun’s body after he found it (which goes above and beyond what grocery delivery people should have to do), and she is still clutching that key, so the priest takes it. They go in to talk to the abbess (the head nun chick), who has an extremely creepy voice and they never see her face because she’s wearing a black veil – never a good sign.

They tell the French cutie grocery guy to go ahead and leave and come back to get them in a couple of days. The priest and the novitiate go in some other part of the nunnery because the abbess tells them they can’t talk to any of the nuns that night. The two of them have kind of a quick, shoehorned-in scene where they talk about their backgrounds – he lost a kid during an exorcism, and she used to have visions that would always end with a phrase that will obviously come in handy later. I guess that is why the Vatican wanted her to come along with the priest, because of these visions.

What follows is some nutty craziness, where the priest dude gets trapped in a grave, and there just happens to be books in there that tell who the demon is at the nunnery. It is kind of odd there were books in a grave (maybe destroy the books about this demon instead of burying them with someone?) and that the demon trapped him in that grave – why would the demon want him to discover those books to learn about him? (The demon.) I mean, I guess the demon had intended for the priest to die in there, but still. Out of all the graves to put him in, you put him in that one? (Think ahead, demon! Big picture, big picture.) And then the books weren’t all that helpful, really, if you ask me, but I am not a demon hunter so I guess I can’t say for sure.

And then the novitiate goes to talk to some nuns, to get the nun scoop, and one of them fills her in on how the castle was built by some guy who summoned a demon, and right before he was successful the church troops burst in and stopped him, and then they made it a nunnery. But now the evil is seeping out anyway.

The French grocery guy comes back because he’s worried about them, and he and the priest start to make their way to find the novitiate, but not before the French grocery guy shoots a corpse that tries to get the priest. I guess it worked because it was a corpse and not a ghost? You would think that maybe a demon could make it so corpses would be able to withstand gunshots – I mean, they’re already back from the dead, why not? Would that really be so hard to make them invincible after that? Or maybe they were just freelancing corpses and weren’t affiliated with the demon at all, which would kind of be a crazy coincidence.

And then they are looking for the pit where the demon is seeping out of and I guess they split up to look for it, which always goes well in horror movies.

Then they defeat the demon using the obvious phrase from her vision and all. Actually, the French guy and the novitiate defeat him; the priest doesn’t really do too much, really. Goldbricker.

So, apparently all of their efforts were for nothing, since this took place in the ‘50s and The Conjuring 2 took place in the 1970s. Oh, and we get a hint at the end that it didn’t work, too. D’oh. And the novitiate actress is the sister (in real life) of the lady who plays Lorraine Warren in the other movies, so she looks a lot like her, so when I first saw this I thought they might try to make some connection between the two like they were related (in the movies), which might have been cool, but no, that’s not the story they went with.  

Like all of these Wan movies, there are some spooky parts, but ultimately, they are kind of disappointing somehow.

Why are the heads of the church always such jerks in these movies?

Gratuitous hot French guy  

Gratuitous speaking in Latin

I hope the novitiate got tested for hepatitis after this ordeal.

Animals harmed: none, although a horse did get scared

It was still better than Scream 6.