1956 - France. A priest is murdered. An evil is spreading. The sequel to the worldwide smash hit follows Sister Irene as she once again comes face-to-face with Valak, the demon nun. I am just going to state for the record that I couldn’t fully make it through the first Nun movie. It was profoundly boring, painfully generic, and lacked any sort of thrills that the Conjuring films excelled at. On the flip side, I loved the first two Conjuring installments and liked the third, although it wasn’t as good as the first two. So, going into watching The Nun II, I was not particularly excited and hoped it would at least be more engaging than the first one. Well, I can definitely profess that this sequel is leaps and bounds more entertaining than the first movie, although that is not saying much. Let’s start with what works. The acting is surely a step up from the first film, with a solid lead performance by Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene. Supporting cast is also rather strong, especially Storm Reid as Debra, a young nun in training and Jonas Bloquet as Maurice, a kindly handyman. There is an attempt to make the dynamic between the younger nuns in training at the Catholic boarding school feel realistic in terms of the social situations and bullying that takes place within the institution.
The direction from Michael Chaves is quite good and there are some impressive shots that create an effectively ominous and eerie atmosphere. I suppose my problems with this movie are the problems I have with all of these Conjuring spin-off flicks. The first two acts are mostly full of hit or miss jump scares, with the typical scenarios of characters walking around for 5 minutes with no sound only to be jolted by either the demonic nun Valak or the usual “look behind and boo” type of deal. The most potent scare in the entire film involves a character watching the magazine pages turn on a newsstand, making out some eye popping visuals until of course, Valak appears within those pages. It’s a hauntingly cool visual and maybe would have been far more effective if it wasn’t spoiled in the trailer. Sure, I might’ve felt butterflies in my stomach during some of these moments, however it all feels like familiar territory with nothing of substantial nuance.
Another thing that made my eyes roll was that the characters still seem to make decisions that absolutely no one else in the real world would make. Yes, I understand it’s a horror movie and it’s almost a given that characters need to go “check out where the noise came from” to further the plot, but it’s just lazy and had me rolling my eyes quite often. It is not until the last 20 minutes in which the movie actually finds focus and delivers on intense scares. Sadly, it was a little too late to completely win me over. That’s not to say this movie is a complete disaster, for there is a mid-credit scene that truly made me scream “NO FUCKING WAY” out loud in the theater and gave me hope that the Conjuring franchise will get back on track in future installments. Overall, while The Nun II serves as an improvement over the dreadfully boring first entry and seems to set the stage for better things to come in the Conjuring universe, it still suffers from the same genre clichés, predictable jump scares, and lack of genuine fear or tension that hurts a majority of modern horror movies.
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