Movie Review: The Nun

Movie Review: The Nun

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

by Elizabeth Desrosiers

Approximately two weeks ago I went to see The Nun. At that point, I had already heard everyone’s

opinion of it, which might I add was pretty bad, but I still thought I’d give it a chance. Here’s my

final review: it’s bad. Before I get into it, let me warn you that I wrote this as to not give away any of

the plot or at least at little as I could.

First thing first, the movie opens up with a scene that, still a few weeks later, I’m unsure if it was a

part of it or not. It goes as follows: you’re in the hallway of a cozy modern home and a mom and her

daughter are talking, at the end of it stands the shadowy figure of a nun. One of them makes a

comment about it and the other says: ‘’Omg, you see her too?’’. At which point the scenes cut to

black and you’re in 1952, presented with the castle where most of the movie takes place. It’s never

brought up again nor do you ever see either of them. If you couldn’t tell, you usually shouldn’t start

your movie by confusing your audience, especially if it’s a horror movie and you’re trying to set a

spooky tone.

Secondly, the writing leaves to be desired. The dialogue is unnatural, stiff and lacks emotions, now if

it’s the fault of the writer, the director or the actors is beyond me, even though I still think they all

had a part to play in this train wreck. On the other hand, the plot is boring and predictable, they

couldn’t even be bothered to find a semi-original plot twist, as it stands, it’s lazy and predictable. The

characters are made from stereotypes on top of stereotypes. The main character, Sister Irene, is an

innocent little flower who loves God and is oblivious, Father Burke is an old man who’s seen things

and Frenchie is a French Canadian, who’s not even played by one, who flirts, gets a lot of girls and is

kinda dumb. They tried to make Father Burke more interesting by giving him a side story, but it’s

really just useless. It doesn’t change anything has to how he acts, reacts or think, it’s really just there

to hit a time quota. As a horror movie, it fails at its job, if anything, it’s really funny. There is no

aspect of it that is scary, they just use very bad and loud jump scares that are clumsily shoved in with

no thoughts whatsoever. To top it off, the foreshadowing is horrid! It’s obvious and lacks any subtlety,

even a five-year-old could have picked up on it!

Thirdly, it even lacks on a technical level. Every single shot in this movie is bland and boring at the

exception of one where you see the scene through the eyes of a virgin Mary and the nuns are in a

circle around the sister. The contrast between the white and black combined with the decor and color

pallet is extremely pleasing to the eye, sadly it only lasts a fraction of second. A particularly bad

scene is one in the final fight where the camera just does shot reverse shot for a good three minutes,

cutting from the drowning sister to a close up of the Nun’s face which, I would like to note, is

extremely funny, I would watch this movie again just for these few shots if I’m being honest. The

CGI is horrible, I would compare it to the one in the new IT if you’ve ever seen it, but at least it’s

barely there. The directing is lazy, people and things are never in the same place as they were in the

previous shot and some things just don’t make sense, for example, at the beginning of the movie a

nun hangs herself by tying the rope to a leg of her bed and jumping out the window, only the window

manages to close completely even with the rope in the way! It’s very frustrating to watch!

I’m gonna go ahead and say this: if you’re going into this movie to watch a well-crafted movie, this is

not the one for you. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think anyone that worked on this movie cared in the

slightest bit. It’s half-heartedly put together and the story is directly taken out of a ‘’How to Horror

For Dummies’’ book. If you’re looking for a decent horror movie go watch IT, it’s not perfect but at

least it does a decent job at being one.