2 Nun 2 Holiness.

The Nun II: Nun Of Your Business marks the final movie in our catchup of The Conjuring Universe films and definitely not the worst. Incidentally The Nun was the peak of Conjuring success, drawing in $365 million in the box office followed by $231 million from Annabelle Goes Home, $216 million from The Conjuring 3, and now $268 million from The Nun II.

Right now there isn’t a whole lot going on in The Conjuring Universe. The Conjuring: Last Rites is coming out and there is apparently a Conjuring TV show. Other than that, and there are zero details on when production might even start for these projects, nothing else is on the slate at the moment. James Wan you coward, reboot the Crooked Man movie. Do it, and you’ll gain .4% of my respect.

The sequel to The Nun was always a guarantee, and not just because of the box office success of the first one. It’s because in the world of things that are unsettling to see possessed by the devil, a nun is probably up there toward the top next to The Pope and maybe Jesus himself. In fact, that’s what The Nun 3 should have. It only makes logical sense that the next Nun movie will have a possessed pope.

The film stars Taissa Farmiga once again as Sister Irene and Jonas Bloquet as Maurice from the first film. Living her life after the traumatic events of the original movie, Sister Irene is brought back into the fight once again when Cardinal delivers some grave news. There’s been a string of murders in the Church and they’re pretty sure the demon Valak is behind it. And sure Valak is killing members of the Church, but it all seems to be in the deliverance of its more pressing hobby; screwing with people.

Irene is joined by Storm Reid as Sister Debra, you may recognize Storm Reid as Idris Elba’s daughter in The Suicide Squad. Anna Popplewell plays Kate, a teacher at the school and also a smooch interest of Maurice.

But how is the movie? Compared to the other films in the series, The Nun II is…fine. The cinematography and camera-work is still the same top notch presentation you’d expect out of the series. They throw away a lot of the overused gags from prior films, and the sets are fantastic. The cast does a great job playing their parts, and again the series doesn’t skimp on the talented child actors. A few of the sets lend themselves to very tight, cramped sequences.

Now that being said, I have applauded the Conjuring movies for their subtleties and The Nun II has its share. However evidently Valak just decided screw it before the movie begins, and while the prior films had a general bend where the demon just messed with the characters for the first 80% of the movie, Valak just straight up starts murdering people. It leads to the pacing being all over the place as Valak goes from shaking down a room full of people to suddenly going back in the shadows and sulking around in the dark. It’s confusing.

It’s also become a little stale how the movie overplays the sequence where something spoopy happens and the character present just stands there staring at this obviously demonic event until the demon goes “ooga booga booga” and the scene shifts. It’s obvious the actor has no real inclination of what is going on or direction on how to react, because it’s just long sequences of them looking like they were told to act mildly confused and constipated.

Rating: B