The Nun (2018)
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The Nun Movie Review
The Nun is a 2018 horror film directed by Corin Hardy and starring Demian Bichir and Taissa Farmiga. It’s a pretty flawed, disappointing effort that should have been much better.
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“Whatever you do, don’t stop praying“
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The plot is pretty forgettable and not great. Actually, the movie tries to have a plot and it does, but it focused way too much on exposition and it needed more immediacy and emotion for it to work. The movie is too much of telling and not enough of showing. I appreciated that the flick tried to have a plot and atmosphere which it did, but it’s just never as sophisticated or as well crafted and intricate as the best movies in this universe.
Demian Bichir is ridiculously bad in this film. He’s a respected actor and here he was just so mediocre that I couldn’t believe how he could have turned out such a weak performance. Most of his yelling scenes and dialogues felt very forced and unnatural. But I appreciated that his character got a backstory at least.
Taissa Farmiga, on the other hand, is so good. She is Vera Farmiga’s younger sister and she reminded me so much of Vera that I could definitely see the resemblance. Her character is a novitiate and I liked the exploration of church hierarchy through her character. She gave a stupendous performance and was the highlight of the film.
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But Frenchie is simply too silly. Although charming, he is way too ridiculous with his cheesy one-liners and overly comedic. He was also unnecessary and actually disappeared for the entire second act. And another problem is that the movie never really used the titular nun enough. She had her moments near the end, but for the most part she was underutilized and underused actually which was extremely problematic as the title would suggest it, but we actually did not get either her or her backstory at all. Thus, it mostly fails to serve as a good prequel.
However, The Nun is technically very good. The cinematography is terrific, the movie is so well shot and the sets are all rather striking. The movie makes a fatal mistake of portraying Romania as Catholic instead of Orthodox, but at least Romania overall is very well portrayed and realistically for the fifties. The graveyard is particularly effective and that burying scene was one of the highlights.
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I also really liked the end fight which was clever in the usage of the blood. Again, Farmiga’s character is very smart which I appreciated. The action is mostly solid, but it’s too sparse and the problem of not being scary is huge. Your horror movies need to be scary and despite being undeniably atmospheric, The Nun is simply never remotely scary, certainly much inferior to the original ‘Conjuring’ and even the second movie. I wanted more actual scares and more connections and backstory for the entire universe.
The Nun is a disappointing movie which is certainly far from bad as the sets are so good, the atmosphere is undeniably strong, some sequences such as the blood of Christ end scene are quite clever and Vera Farmiga’s sister is quite memorable, but Demian Bichir embarrassed himself with a mediocre performance, the movie has too much exposition and not enough action and for a movie called The Nun, you never really get enough of her in it. Also, it’s simply never as scary as it should have been.
