The Nun

It’s well crafted and packed with ghostly attractions, an addition to a popular universe that never gets boring and that brings some fresh air to its exhausted premise, at least with the setting. However, it’s also crammed with the expected clichés, predictable and incomprehensibly downplayed by moments or one-liners that feel like out of a second-rate action flick. The titular ghost looks cool, but its inability to deal with only three determined adversaries (of which one is a young, squirrelly novice nun and another a village yokel with a shotgun) gradually weakens its aura. Solid work, but it would have been a lot better with a more inaccessible and properly bloody decadent tone. 60% (03/21/2019)

Jan Wan is proving that he’s the unconquerable king of current horror movies about ghosts. Corin Hardy and Romanian locations were a great choice for this horror called The Nun. It’s nice that before, when James Wan invited us to the Warrens’ house, he referred to the story of the demon Valak. So he had to know already then that he or a colleague of his would make a movie about it, because the premise is really good! And I haven’t seen so faithfully portrayed period atmosphere in a horror movie in a while. Shooting the film in Romania definitely didn’t hurt – quite the contrary. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of that monastery. (12/31/2018)

Three stars, grudgingly. The screenplay must have been written by an automatic horror generator and it’s surprising that Warners can’t manage their dark universe better on this aspect, but for the consumers it’s enough, I guess. What scared me the most about The Nun is that the same person is credited with the screenplay of the second part of It. I hope they do a better job there. If there’s anything that deserves praise in The Nun is the choice of location and the setting in an old castle as a whole (the Hunedoara castle in Romania); the ancient corridors, cellars, chapels and graveyards do create atmosphere. Unfortunately, the creators were incapable of doing much more with it. Which quite surprised me, Hardy’s previous film, The Hallow, was brilliant. Overall, it’s just fat and salt-free, with a plot that fails to be engaging (not that there is much of it anyway: the characters come, then hang around for while and walk in circles, then one of them literally explains what’s going on, which is followed by a chase with the evil nun, the end), the characters are uninteresting; a scary movie for kids. In a year when we’ve already seen a fairly above-average number of well-made horror films of various sub-genres, these mainstream flicks need to be better. If you’re looking for a good tribute to the old Hammer films, better go for A Cure for Wellness or The Woman in Black. (09/06/2018)

This is a generic commercial horror and a quick-brewing franchise, whose only goal seems to have been to take more cash out of the audience’s pockets, and to get a demonic nun into the living room of the Warren couple. The script is therefore just a dark padding without any real story or surprises, but it is blessed with a multitude of tropes such as ‘We’ll move the camera to the side, but then move it right back to reveal a loud jump scare.’ I was most frightened when I checked the time and saw there were 40 minutes left. (01/06/2019)

The American film The Nun was rather disappointing for me. Instead of playing on the atmosphere, which could be very dense, it ends up playing more on the impression of how the portrayed will appear. It's as if the film wanted to be a spectacle rather than a good horror film, which strikes me as a shame. Suddenly you have the feeling that you've seen what you're watching elsewhere and that it's not really all that imaginative. (03/29/2019)