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The Nun II (R16, 109 mins) Directed by Michael Chaves ***½
The Nun is a spin-off from The Conjuring series of films.
She was first introduced – I think? – as a painting on the wall at Ed and Lorraine Warren’s house, in a Conjuring movie. And shortly after, the first film (err, Nun One?) turned up, way back in 2018.
The Nun herself – the character – was always a bit rubbish. No matter how effective the rest of the film might be, the central villain is a rejected sketch for a Marilyn Manson video at best. The Nun is a tall figure in a classic black habit. She has glowy eyes and a pretty silly black-and-white make-up scheme. And, that’s it. I have literally seen better creations than the Nun, assembled by the mothers of Paekākāriki for their nippers on Halloween night.
The Nun II gets around this problem in none-too subtle fashion, by keeping the supposed star of the show off the screen as much as possible. The nun likes to lurk in the dark places, occasionally throw a shadow over the lens and generally hide herself away, except for split-second cameos for the eyes of the about-to-be-departed.
At the end of the first Nun, as probably no one will remember, our hero Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) was saved from the demon Valak by a hunky young gardener known to everyone as Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet). What we didn’t know, was that Frenchie is now possessed himself, and has made his way from Hungary to France, where he is working out in the provinces as a handyman at a boarding school for girls. The year is 1956.
Soon enough, word reaches Irene her old foe is back, and, like some slightly terrified and unwilling avenger, she is on her way to do battle.
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Storm Reid joins The Conjuring universe as The Nun II’s Sister Debra.
From there, The Nun II pretty much writes itself. We know the demon is going to leap out of the doe-eyed and adorable Frenchie to scare the bejeebers out of some poor fool every 10 minutes or so – and that a minimum of dialogue, or what we might-as-well refer to as “plot”, will be allowed to get in the way.
Other nuns, priests, children and a young widow all turn up on-screen, and dutifully await their turn to be put in peril. Towards the end, the movie briefly becomes a Da Vinci Code-style caper, with car-loads of shrieking sisters sliding over the slick cobblestones in pursuit of a religious relic of such a bonkers provenance I just now looked it up on Wikipedia to see if it might be real. Sadly, it is a fiction.
The movies in this franchise are machines that get us from one set-piece to the next with brisk efficiency, and The Nun II is no exception.
But, none of that even hints at what I enjoyed about this film. The Nun II and the rest of The Conjuring stable are production-line cinema. There’ll be a Michelin star on the Kent Terrace branch of Dominoes before any of these films pick up an Oscar. But, credit where it’s due. The Nun II, like a few others in the series, is an occasionally fantastic looking and sounding film.
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Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) faces an old foe in The Nun II.
The Nun herself might be no more frightening than a malnourished panda, but around her, the sets, costuming and art direction are often superb. I also appreciated that director Michael Chaves (The Conjuring 3) and his crew were achieving as many scares as possible in-camera, with shadows and well-thought-through angles.
One scene in particular, of a rack of magazines flicking and fluttering into a mosaic of faces and figures, is one of the most attractive and inventive sequences I’ve seen in any film in months. There must be a massive CGI component to it, but it is seamless and quite beautiful to watch.
So here’s to you, Nun II. You delivered what you promised – and you looked and sounded better than you needed to while you did it.
The Nun II is now screening in cinemas nationwide.
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