Well, shit. After gradually warming up to the Conjuring Universe, the official threequel The Devil Made Me Do It and the more recent atrocious copycats like The Unholy, The Exorcism Of God, and The Pope’s Exorcist have made me seriously reconsider that position. As much as I have good memories of at least half of these films, the underlying dogma of this entire sub-genre is starting to wear thin on my sensibilities, and the quality of the films themselves isn’t really picking up the slack. Still, I am nothing if not open to being surprised, and the first Nun is still a film I quite liked when I first saw it, so I’m willing to give this one a chance.
Actually, if I’m being completely honest, the main reason why I want this to turn out good doesn’t have anything to do with my changing opinions on this franchise, or even my fondness for the first film. Rather, it’s because this has a story and screenwriting credit from Akela Cooper, whose work on Malignant and M3GAN has made her a name in modern horror worth keeping track of. And from the offset, the story here fits with her predilection to old-school campy styles of horror.
Primarily set in a girls’ boarding school, it feels like a
hybridisation of the feminine isolation of the convent from the first film and
a similar instance tied to a slightly more modern conceit. The possibility for
distressed nuns and distressed small children isn’t exactly a deficit for a horror
movie, especially when it shows that it isn’t exactly squeamish about
terrorising or even inflicting harm on its child characters. For all my railing
against the more misanthropic attitudes regarding the writing of horror
characters, nothing can kneecap the chills of a story quicker than the
realisation that the storytellers simply won’t allow harm to come to those involved.
From there, the way it builds on the conclusion of the original, with Jonas Bloquet’s Frenchie now possessed by the titular demon… well, it gestures at some interesting ideas, but it never really makes full use of them. His presence within the boarding school brings a certain gendered threat to the proceedings, but with how much Frenchie is shown to do good like befriending and even defending student Katelyn Rose Downey’s Sophie, it feels like there should be more palpable tragedy in showing a good man in the grip of a great demon.
There’s also the general iffyness as far as the film’s use of religious and demonic iconography. And no, I’m not going to bring back my losing battle with the recurring misuse of the Cross of Saint Peter; there’s other weirdnesses to bring up here. Now, the ultimate goal of the demon Valak here puts him as a fallen angel seeking to reclaim that divine power, which makes sense since Valak has historically been depicted as a cherub-like figure complete with wings. It may not be the imagery used in this film, but it still scans as a thematic detail.
But then it gets into invoking Saint Lucy, whose death during the Diocletianic Persecution is a major plot point, and… well, this shares the same director as The Devil Made Me Do It, and it’s here where that kind of shows. Specifically saying that she was killed by ‘Pagans’ (because outright stating that she died at the hands of the Roman Empire could make the presence of the Roman Catholic Church within this story might make the more devout audiences out there uncomfortable) just brings me back to the kind of attitudes that made me leave behind Christianity in the first place. I chose my pen name for a reason.
But on the flipside, there’s quite a bit here that shows why I also walked away from atheism, as it maintains the positive depiction of faith that helped win me over with the first Nun. Admittedly, it’s mostly relegated here to being a blessed Chekov’s Gun in the dialogue’s description of miracles and the function of faith in belief systems, but there’s also the ‘Defy The Devil’ prank that Sophie’s students play on her, which echoes the vanguard depiction of nuns from the other film. There’s also just how well the returning Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene and newcomer Storm Reid as Sister Debra play off of each other on-screen, making for a decent buddy act that helps keep the scenes outside of the boarding school engaging.
It helps that the presentation still provides a suitably spooky atmosphere for this story. Even if just through the individual set pieces, like the aforementioned Defy The Devil scene, Irene being terrorised by a magazine stand that works far better than that description may make it sound, a quite intense moment in a confessional booth, not to mention the general zippiness that most of the death scenes are shown with, this has Michael Chaves doing much better than he did with TDMMDI. The overall tone of the work, focusing primarily on Valak actively terrorising those he encounters, certainly gets the heartrate up.
While I wouldn’t consider this to be as good as the first Nun movie, which I’m not expecting to be a popular opinion, this follow-up still works as a rather simple but effective bit of Christian horror. It has enough awareness of exploitation staples to have fun with the core concepts presented, even if the overall handling of such things serves as another reminder that there needs to be variety outside of the Christian way of thinking for these kinds of productions, and the performances keep things interesting throughout. There’s still a feeling that more could’ve been done with this story, specifically to do with Frenchie’s role in events, but for what it is, it's decent horror fare.
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