Bad Habits
If ever a horror film needed more sleaze and gore, it’s the ninth (!) entry in The Conjuring Universe.
The Nun II
Director: Michael Chaves • Writers: Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, Akela Cooper
Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Storm Reid, Katelyn Rose Downey, Anna Popplewell, Bonnie Aarons, Suzanne Bertish, Léontine d'Oncieu
USA • 1hr 50mins
Opens Hong Kong September 7 • IIB
Grade: C+
Back in 2018, The Nun was spun off from The Conjuring 2, and focused on novitiate nun Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), who helps conquer the demon Valak in Romania in 1952. It’s the same demon lookalike ghostbuster Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) wrestles with in the 1970s, in London, and Irene and Father Burke locate it hiding in a haunted abbey, with a little help from local fruit vendor Maurice, AKA Frenchie. There’s a lot of praying and wind. Nonetheless, the film made a boatload of money (US$360 million) on its skimpy US$20 million budget, so you know it was getting another entry in the still-growing The Conjuring universe.
Co-writing partners Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing penned the cult hit The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and Akela Cooper gave us M3GAN and the gloriously bonkers Malignant, so hopes going into The Nun II are justifiably high. At the very least it has to be an improvement on the by-the-numbers The Nun, right? Well, it is, but it’s also a lot of the same, with shades of Russell Crowe’s hilariously entertaining, and self-aware, possession thriller from earlier this year, The Pope’s Exorcist (that accent will be as eternal as Rome itself). Four years after the events in Romania, Sister Irene winds up in a small town in France battling Valak again, this time with help from her new partner in demon-busting, Sister Debra (Storm Reid, The Suicide Squad, The Last of Us). Valak has attached himself to the vagabond Maurice (Jonas Bloquet, Elle), now the hunky handyman at a girls’ boarding school (there will be a porn version of this in 3… 2…), which happens to be on the site of yet another abbey, allegedly the hiding place of a crucial Catholic artefact.
Easy, sister
Goldberg, Naing and Cooper weren’t able to completely exorcise The Nun II of co-producer New Line and (likely more to blame) distributor Warner’s worst instincts. Despite being rated R (the best way to maximise cash flow is by going PG-13), The Nun II has a remarkably low body count and little in the way of gore (justifying its IIB here). It really should have more of both. Director Michael Chaves, who’s contributed to the ’verse with The Curse of La Llorona and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, repeats his missteps from the latter film by pulling his punches. He dropped the ball on what could have been a corker of a demonic courtroom thriller by taking the easy way out and, the bigger sin, never giving us the devillish courtroom showdown we all wanted. This time around, he awkwardly straddles the line between the moody dark corners and negative space of so-called “elevated horror” and the camp of true B schlock – an entirely valid route to take. Dude, they gave you a group of mean girls to slaughter! Run with that. Instead, valuable minutes are wasted on the burgeoning family unit forming among a teacher, Kate (Anna Popplewell, now grown Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia films), and her introverted daughter Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey), whose primary function is to run, stop, turn, and shriek for most of Act III. It’s fat on the bones The Nun II shouldn’t have. If ever there were a time to lean into the tropes of “Scene 27. Priest: It’s in Aix-en-Provence! Smash cut. Scene 28. A car pulls up to the boarding school and Irene and Debra get out”… this is it.
When The Nun II does finally flirt with its campier self, it picks up considerable speed. There are more than a few great moments in the last half hour, with all sorts of twisted Bible lore, a brilliant devil goat (think Black Phillip from The Witch, but on steroids), and a grim-funny fate for the school’s headmistress, Madame Laurent (Suzanne Bertish). And when Valak starts body-slamming nuns like she’s in a WWE wrestling ring, well, it’s a riot – in the right way. Farmiga and Reid are a fairly good team (nice to have a Black nun on hand to just go ahead and get shit done for a damn change), even if Debra’s primary function (will she find her faith?) is signalled early on. But it’s Bonnie Aarons who deserves a lot of the credit for making The Nun such a compelling figure. Aarons has one of the movies’ great faces, and it’s sadly (mostly) covered by creepy make-up as Valak. But even that can’t quite obscure the imperiousness and rage Valak is supposed to demonstrate. On top of that, Valak is called “he”, the nun is “she.” People. there’s a movie right there! The Conjuring: Last Rites is on the way (production is on hold due to the strikes) but if we’re lucky, Valak will make an appearance in that film. Somehow. Someway. She deserves an encore. Or an origin story. Hey, stupider things have happened. — DEK
*The Nun II was reviewed during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, it wouldn't exist.