The Nun

Platform: HBO Max

Director: Corbin Hardy

Release Year: 2018

Watch Date: I can’t remember. It was between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Conjuring.

My Rating: 7.3

This movie is by far my favorite of The Conjuring universe. I like that it provides a little bit of backstory for the nun that shows up in The Conjuring 2. I know that theoretically all of the movies in this cinematic universe are based on true stories featuring Ed and Lorraine Warren, but some of the stories seem over dramatized (see my take on The Devil Made Me Do It). One of them (cough cough Annabelle cough cough) is blatantly wrong….right down to the flipping doll itself, which really bothers me.

I knew about the Warrens long before Hollywood began making films about them. For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with supernatural things and the occult. I mean….hello….horror movies are my favorite (see my review on Legend for some great back story there…..I apparently forgot to do my review of that one earlier, so I posted it right before this one).

There are quite a few over dramatized elements to this story. But in the end, more than being a great story about demon possession, it is a phenomenal ghost story. A priest and a novice nun go to a castle in Europe to investigate the suicide of a nun. As it happens this particular nun took her own life so she could not be taken by the demon and let it lose into the world. The priest and novice nun (to limit confusion we will call her by her actual name, Irene) are accompanied by the local townsman (Frenchie) who found the dead nun.

Irene, much like Lorraine Warren, has a gift for seeing the dead and events. The priest is plagued by memories of a young boy who had these same gifts. The priest thought the boy was possessed and found him after he had been tortured by the other priests. The boy died. This boy pops up periodically throughout the film to torture the priest.

Irene thinks she is talking to the sisters at the convent about what has been going on, only to discover that all of the sisters have been killed. The nun who killed herself had been one of two remaining nuns who were trying to find a relic with the blood of Christ that would seal up the gateway to hell housed in the castle. The final battle has Irene (who has taken her nun vows now) finding the relic, the demon nun killing Frenchie, and the priest sealing back up the gateway to hell after Irene destroys the demon nun by emptying the blood of Christ into the water she and the nun are both in.

Then the priest, Irene, and Frenchie all pack up and leave. What the what?!? Yep, you read that right….Frenchie. And that’s how I knew that the demon got away. Frenchie is the gentleman that Ed and Lorraine are exercising when the demon nun gets loose.

I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t think I will be watching it again. But who knows…..maybe I will.

Photo Credit: imdb.com