Bless Me, Father, for I Have Watched a Franchise Cash Grab
There are many ways to test your faith: surviving a crisis, forgiving your enemies, or, if you’re truly devout, watching The Nun (2018) without losing your will to live. Directed by Corin Hardy and written by Gary Dauberman, this Gothic spin-off from The Conjuring universe promises demonic horror, sacred mystery, and Romanian ambiance—and delivers, instead, a 96-minute Vatican-approved nap.
It’s the kind of movie that looks great in trailer form: dark abbeys, flickering candles, creepy nuns, and ominous Latin chanting. But once you sit down, you realize you’re watching two hours of people wandering around holding lanterns, whispering “Who’s there?” to literal darkness. The Nun is less a film and more a guided tour of every horror cliché blessed with a holy water budget.
The Plot: Sister Act, But Make It Demonically Boring
The movie opens in 1952 Romania, where two nuns are doing what nuns do best—screaming in terror while one hangs herself to save her soul from a CGI cloud of evil. Her body is later discovered by a man named Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), who’s basically a flirty farmhand version of a Hallmark Christmas movie protagonist, except he delivers corpses instead of presents.
The Vatican, never one to ignore a good PR nightmare, sends Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and novitiate Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) to investigate the death. Together, they travel to a remote abbey where the locals speak exclusively in foreboding riddles and all the candles seem to blow out for dramatic effect.
Their mission: find out what’s haunting the monastery. The answer: the same thing haunting this franchise—too many sequels and not enough originality.
Taissa Farmiga: The Nun Who Deserved Better
Let’s start with Taissa Farmiga, because she’s the one bright spot in this dark abyss of predictable scares. The younger sister of Conjuring star Vera Farmiga, Taissa has the unenviable job of playing a wide-eyed, innocent nun who must face literal Hell while delivering lines like, “God ends where fear begins.”
Farmiga gives it her all—her face says “Oscar contender,” while the script says “Halloween Horror Nights employee.” She’s believable, grounded, and occasionally moving, but her performance is drowned beneath a wave of bad dialogue, dim lighting, and one very overworked fog machine.
Father Burke, played by Demián Bichir, is your standard issue haunted priest: gravelly voice, tragic backstory, and an exorcism that went wrong twenty years ago. His chemistry with Sister Irene is decent, though occasionally it flirts with uncomfortable levels of “nun tension.”
And then there’s Frenchie—part comic relief, part accidental savior, and entirely unnecessary. He’s charming enough, but every time he cracks a joke amid demonic chaos, you can feel the script elbowing you in the ribs like, “See? He’s funny! That means you’re having fun!”
Valak: The Demon Nun Who Needs a New Agent
Valak, the titular demon nun, was terrifying in The Conjuring 2—a background nightmare, subtle and sinister. Here, she’s given the spotlight, and much like a side character getting their own spinoff, she immediately loses all mystique.
Every time Valak appears, it’s heralded by thunder, chanting, and camera angles so dramatic they could double as perfume commercials. She stalks hallways, pops out from shadows, and hisses like an angry librarian, but she never feels dangerous—just punctual.
The movie treats her like a theme park attraction: “Step right up, folks, for the jump scare monastery! Tickets are blessed and non-refundable!”
By the fifth slow pan toward a shadowy figure that turns out to be another not scary at all apparition, you begin to wish Valak would just kill everyone and end your suffering.
The Setting: Beautiful, Brooding, and Completely Empty
Filmed in Romania, The Nun has the visual aesthetic of a horror masterpiece. Every shot looks like it should be painted on black velvet and hung in a cathedral. There are cobwebbed hallways, moonlit cemeteries, and enough Gothic architecture to make Dracula feel underdressed.
But atmosphere without story is like holy water without the holiness. For all its grandeur, the film never establishes real tension. The abbey’s layout makes no sense, the rules of the haunting are vague at best, and every corridor seems to lead directly to another identical corridor. By the 30-minute mark, you realize you’ve seen this hallway before—twice.
It’s like being trapped inside a haunted IKEA: everything looks nice, but you can’t find the exit.
Jump Scares for Jesus
You know how The Conjuring built dread through pacing, silence, and slow reveals? The Nun took that strategy, blessed it with holy water, and threw it into the fire.
Every five minutes, there’s a jump scare—most of them so telegraphed that even the ghosts look embarrassed. Statues turn their heads. Doors slam. A nun appears behind someone in a mirror. There’s one bit where a shadowy figure moves across the background while the camera follows it. That’s not tension—that’s a studio executive whispering, “Make it scarier!”
The movie doesn’t want to disturb you; it wants to startle you into thinking you’re scared. It’s horror as a reflex test.
The Theology of Dumb Decisions
Horror movies often rely on characters making bad choices, but The Nun elevates this to a religious experience. Father Burke literally falls into an open grave because he was chasing a hallucination. Sister Irene wanders off alone multiple times in a haunted monastery. Frenchie repeatedly yells “Who’s there?” in English—in Romania.
By the end, when the characters discover the Blood of Christ in a fancy reliquary, you half expect them to start using it as a flashlight instead of a weapon. The only thing scarier than Valak’s makeup is the screenplay’s IQ.
The Ending: Holy Water, Holy Nonsense
The grand finale is a biblical blender of fire, water, blood, and CGI. Valak tries to possess Sister Irene, but our heroine spits the literal Blood of Christ into the demon’s face. Yes, you read that right—holy expectoration saves the day. It’s part theology, part Nickelodeon slime gag.
Valak is banished, the abbey collapses, and Frenchie turns out to be secretly possessed. This conveniently ties the film into the broader Conjuring timeline, which is either clever universe-building or lazy recycling, depending on how much popcorn you’ve got left.
Box Office Miracle, Cinematic Sin
Let’s be fair: The Nun made $366 million on a $22 million budget, proving once again that audiences will show up for anything wearing a habit. But financial success doesn’t cleanse creative sins.
It’s not that The Nun is unwatchable—it’s that it’s forgettable. It’s like eating plain oatmeal that occasionally screams at you. Everything about it screams “corporate horror”—a movie made by committee, for a shared universe that’s running on holy fumes.
Final Verdict: Unholy, Uneventful, and Unsurprisingly Profitable
In the grand cathedral of horror cinema, The Nun is the confessional booth—dark, cramped, and full of people whispering about things you’ve already heard before.
Yes, it’s pretty. Yes, the cast tries their best. But beneath all the incense and atmosphere lies a movie so by-the-numbers it could be used to teach demonology via PowerPoint.
If you’re looking for deep lore, meaningful scares, or a reason to sleep with the lights off, look elsewhere. But if you enjoy watching people shout Latin at smoke while wearing religious cosplay—well, bless your heart.
Final Score: 2 out of 5 Blood-Spitting Nuns.
The Nun is proof that even demons have off days—and apparently, so do directors.
