THE NUN (2018)
Label: Warner Bros. Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 96 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Corin Hardy
Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir, Bonnie Aarons
Synopsis: When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in “The Conjuring 2,” as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.
As the Conjuring shared universe goes The Nun is pretty successful outing in my opinion, a Gothic horror set in Romania in the 1950's, centering around a spooky old Abbey, surrounded by a graveyard, drenched in fog and loaded with spooky atmosphere. I love period films, bringing this one back to the 50's was a great idea, separating it from the other Conjuring spin-offs, giving it an old horror aesthetic, but still amped-up with a few too many jump scares for my tastes.
Here we have Father Burke (Demián Bichir, Machete Kills) and Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, American Horror Story: Apocalypse) being summoned by the Catholic Church to investigate the death of a nun in a Transylvania, whose corpse was found hanging by a local villager named Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet, Orphan). They head to Transylvania and team-up with Frenchie, heading to the Abbey where they meets the spooky Abbess, who informs them that the nuns are observe a period of silence during the night, that they are welcome to stay in the adjoining convent till the morning.
Over the course of the night they are visited upon by demonic apparitions, and of course, the evil nun from The Conjuring 2. The Nun succeeds in tone and atmosphere, a well-crafted visual experience that brought to mind the fog shrouded pictures of vintage Hammer Films, but it falls back into shocks and startles, and not enough on character and story, pretty standard for the films in this extended universe so far. It's a fun popcorn film but it isn't all that scary, it's all surface level fright but nothing deeper, nothing that gets under the skin.
That said I think the film is successful in what it sets out to achieve, fans of this series of films will no doubt find it quite entertaining. There's a lot of polish here, the titular nun having a Nosferatu-ish look, like what we saw with Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot. The set design and locations are eye candy for sure, Gothic architecture, foreboding forests and rickety grave yards permeate the film, director Corin Hard (The Hallow) knows how to fill a frame with eerie imagery, I just wish he could fill the story with enough potency to match the excellent visuals. For the more deep cut horror fans I will say that there is what I believe to be a nod to Lucio Fulci's The City of the Living Dead involving a living person confined to a coffin, I don't think that;'s an accident, someone involved with this film loves Italian horror.
Audio/Video: The Nun arrives on Blu-ray/DVD combo from Warner Bros looking gorgeous, the 108p HD widescreen (2.40:1) looks crisp and stunning with good clarity and depth. The fog is well resolved as are textures and fine detail throughout. Audio comes by way of a robust English DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix that makes good use of the surrounds to create a proper creepy vibe.
Extras on the disc include several studio produced featurettes and about 10-min of deleted scenes. This release also includes a slipcover and a Movie Anywhere digital code for the film.
Special Features:
– A New Horror Icon (5 min)
– Gruesome Planet (6 min)
– The Conjuring Chronology (4 min)
– Deleted Scenes
The Nun is a decent mainstream horror flick, judging my it's blockbuster success it seems to have gotten under the skin of the general masses, but it's a bit too slick and fraught with loud startles and cheap scares that aren't earned through suspense and storytelling for me to love it. I did enjoy it though, a decent popcorn horror entry that doesn't require much thought.
