By George Haerle
For The Daily World
The moment pumpkin spice lattes and apple-cinnamon candles start popping up, it’s Halloween season for movie lovers. From the looks of it, we should have a good run of horror films in the theaters with “The Predator,” the remake of “Suspiria,” and “Halloween” coming up. Unfortunately, “The Nun” might not be the best movie to kick off the season.
Let’s start with the good: “The Nun” has some of the best gothic atmosphere and set design since Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak.” The set designers and artists who worked on the film seemed to draw some influence from 1992’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” both visually and stylistically.
That being said, if a film’s atmosphere and set design ever came close to saving a lousy movie, this would be the one — but even then it doesn’t come close. With a better antagonist, better script and better scares, this could have been one hell of a horror film.
The biggest problem with “The Nun” is that it’s all jump scares that have no lasting effect. There’s no sort of attempt to leave anything to the viewer’s imagination.
It’s a horror movie with no patience for its own genre. The plot is sort of dull, and when the creepy music cues or a door creaks open, it’s as if the filmmakers are telling the audience that’s when they are supposed to be scared. When something pops out from behind a character for the 14th time, you might notice that “The Nun” is better at making its audience flinch than actually horrifying them.
The first 10 minutes of the film are solid, setting up a creepy location in the form of an old abbey where two nuns confront a mysterious evil in the depths of a crucifix-laden hallway. When the events lead to the last of the two nuns committing suicide, two representatives are dispatched by the Catholic Church to investigate the grounds, and determine whether the abbey is still “holy.”
As characters, the priest (Damian Bichir) and novice nun (Taissa Farmiga, little sister to the “Conjuring” series’ Vera Farmiga) sent to investigate are so unbelievably stupid — just mindlessly following the creepy noises and apparitions that are trying to kill them. This isn’t to say their acting is terrible, as both are talented and do the absolute best with what they are given. Their script was just subpar.
Though the scares are questionable in their execution, the characters are weak and the story is quite underdeveloped, once again it should be emphasized how good the film is aesthetically.
The effects, sets and atmosphere just can’t be praised enough, making the movie worthwhile if you could pick it up at the bottom of a bargain bin. The CGI is decent when the many practical effects aren’t possible. The abbey where the movie is set makes for a fantastic haunted house of sorts, and some of the set pieces are designed in a grand, macabre gothic style that should have been the setting for a better horror film.
The Nun herself is sort of just a background force in the film, making several appearances and doing a few creepy-crawly appearances before being confronted in the third act. All of the mystery surrounding the entity from “The Conjuring 2” has been stripped away, and it already feels like this movie monster/demon has already made one too many appearances to be scary.
“The Nun” appears to be a clash of of good and evil on this side of the fourth wall: The designers and special effects artists clearly cared about making a great-looking gothic scare fest, but it’s dragged into the depths by careless writing and incompetent direction.
* * *
“The Nun” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.
George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.
