The Nun II Review – Moody Setting, Mild Scares
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“Do you want to watch a horror movie, it’s a sequel, the first one was very mediocre, but the trailer for this one looks great.”
Sounds like a bad pitch, but my family took the bait anyway and we decided to watch “The Nun II” for movie night. Directed by Michael Chaves, whose last horror film, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” was based on a real case, “The Nun II” is completely fictional but does need the viewer to remember details from its 2018 predecessor.
Honestly, I couldn’t remember anything from the first film either, despite having seen it in the theater. However, there’s a scene in this sequel at the beginning where a group of nuns discuss how the Vatican had dispatched a Priest and a young nun to investigate a demonic entity haunting the nuns at the Saint Carta monastery in Romania. So that’s all you need to know about the first film – Father Burke and Sister Irene try to stop a demon from murdering nuns and barely escape with their lives.
Taissa Farmiga reprises her role as Sister Irene, and she is once again requested to investigate the mysterious deaths of priests across Europe, as there seems to be a pattern to them, and the Church suspects a powerful demon is on the loose, looking for something. Irene suspects Valak, the same demon that haunted Saint Carta is back. Storm Reid plays Debra, a young American nun, who insists of assisting Irene in her quest to find and stop the demon.
“The Nun II” is set in 1956 and begins with the shocking murder of a Priest in France. Michael Chaves and the team set a broody, haunting tone for the film, with the cinematography re-creating a fitting gothic atmosphere for this horror tale. There’s a lot of witty and creative use of shadows, lights and transitions in the film. However, throughout the 1 hour 50-minute runtime, the creators spend way more time building suspense and annoyingly few seconds on the actual gory deaths and violence of Valak’s victims. I had to double-check the movie’s rating; it’s “R,” which means it’s not suitable for viewers under 17. However, for a horror film, it almost felt PG-13. Why make an “R” rated movie if you’re going to shy away from showing blood, gore, and violence in a scary story?
Forget scary, “The Nun II” is often unwittingly funny in some scenes, especially during the climactic moments, which, by the way, were pure chaos. Apart from Valak, another demon is seen wreaking havoc at a boarding school, which used to be a monastery, and the second demon is added in for sheer entertainment purposes. The second demon’s sudden appearance, motivations, origins, nothing is explained to the viewers, unless you take into account the passing tales told by the schoolchildren and be satisfied with it. This second demon casually disappears the way it appeared, and unless you pay attention to every little detail, you won’t even realize what happens to it in the end.
Well, anyway, if you are an avid horror movie fan like me, you’ll find “The Nun II” to be quite passable, however, it could’ve been so much more. The cast is convincing, but the unfolding events are not scary enough. There is a mid-credit scene featuring the Warrens, the paranormal investigators, which leaves ample scope for a Nun III.
You can stream “The Nun II” on JioCinema Premium or rent it on Prime Video.
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