We’re slowly making our way there.

I’m catching up folks. The Nun is the fifth of eight movies in the Conjuring series and the fifth of seven currently easily viewable without having to rent a film. We’ll see how quickly Nun 2 goes on HBO Max. According to stuff I’m seeing online the movie should be up on October 28 which gives me just enough time to probably still not catch up on the next two films before then.

But let’s talk about The Nun.

The Nun is a spinoff of The Conjuring 2 directed by Corin Hardy, best known for 2015’s The Hallow. Written by Gary Dauberman who also did It and It Chapter 2, The Nun tells the story of The Nun, the creepy demon Nun lady we saw in The Conjuring 2. Sadly The Conjuring 2’s other planned spinoff The Crooked Man was shitcanned a couple years ago. I think I’d have rather had that film.

Demián Bichir plays Father Burke, a specialist priest sent by the Vatican to investigate a monastery where two nuns recently died. You may not recognize Bichir without his beard, but he played Marco “The Mexican” in Hateful Eight. Taissa Farmiga plays Sister Irene, who accompanies Father Burke also due to her natural skills in uncovering evil forces. They meet up with Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) from the nearby town who wants to figure out why all these nuns are dying. Also he’s French.

The cast is fantastic, but I’m going to say this is my least favorite Conjuring film so far. In all the ways that the prior films have been pretty dignified in their approach to horror, The Nun kinda throws that out the window and has way too many jump scares for the sake of going “ooga booga booga” to the audience. There are a few jumpscares that are beat-for-beat repeats of stuff from Conjuring 2 which is disappointing as they also tend to be the ones that go on way too long despite being scary the first time in the first movie. They do shake them up a bit, but honestly I wish we would have gotten the Crooked Man movie.

Which isn’t to say that the film is bad by any means. The cinematography as with prior movies is top notch, I don’t know if they have the same crew working on these or someone looking over the dailies to make sure they fit but you’d never know there were different directors on the Conjuring spinoffs. The writing is well done, both in the scene direction and how sequences in the film are set up. The big twist really caught me off guard and I don’t think most people will see it coming.

I’m just not entirely sure if the Nun is able to carry itself as one film, let alone 2. I assume the sequel will be a better story, at least I hope it is, now that they’re done explaining the origins of the spoopy nun. The more the Conjuring people spin off movies the closer we hit diminishing returns on box office interest. Unfortunately they may be getting the wrong idea since The Nun is the last film to break $300 million in the box office but it’s also the highest grossing of the last three movies.

On to Annabelle Comes Home. Whenever.

Rating: B+