“The Nun” is a prequel to “The Conjuring,” and it wants to be scary. It mostly isn’t. The movie follows a young nun and a priest sent to investigate the suicide of a Catholic nun in a Romanian abbey. What they find there is supposed to be the devil himself, trapped in a human form and ready to corrupt anyone who comes near him. The setup sounds promising. The execution falls apart.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
A Slow Start
The movie spends its first half hour establishing the abbey and the characters. This is where the film’s biggest problem becomes clear: there is almost nothing to care about. The nun, Sister Irene, is played by Demián Bichir, and he delivers his lines with the kind of intensity that should be reserved for a character we actually like. Instead, he plays a man who is terrified of everything around him, including the audience. His fear is meant to be contagious. It just reads as overacting.
The priest, Father Burke, played by Jonas Pais, fares no better. He is a walking exposition machine, spouting off about the history of the abbey and the nature of evil in ways that feel less like dialogue and more like a textbook reading. The two leads have no chemistry because neither of them ever gets a chance to develop one. They are stuck delivering speeches and reacting to things they can barely believe themselves.
The Devil’s Trap
The villain of “The Nun” is a demon named Bathory, played by Doug Jones. He looks like a snake with a human face, and he moves with a slithering grace that is genuinely unsettling. The problem is that the movie never commits to making him scary. He pops out of mirrors, hides behind tapestries, and whispers in people’s ears. None of it lands.
The climax, which involves the nun and the priest trying to exorcise Bathory, is rushed and anticlimactic. The film sets up a confrontation that could have been tense and frightening, but it resolves itself with a single line of dialogue and a shrug. The whole thing feels like a letdown after the build-up.
Sound Design and Music
Where “The Nun” does succeed is in its sound design. The creaking of doors, the distant whispering, and the sudden thuds all contribute to a sense of dread that the screen often fails to match. The score, by Mychael Danna, is moody and atmospheric, though it tends to swell at moments where the picture should be doing the heavy lifting. When the music stops, the film is exposed for what it is: a collection of jump scares that rely on cheap tricks rather than genuine tension.
A Long Running Time
At 109 minutes, “The Nun” feels stretched thin. There is padding everywhere, from unnecessary flashbacks to the abbey’s past to pointless scenes of the priest and the nun arguing about faith. The film would have benefited from cutting twenty minutes or more. As it stands, the pacing sags in the middle, and the final act rushes through what should have been a slow, building conclusion.
| Act | Time Span | Key Event |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | First 30 minutes | Introduction of Sister Irene and Father Burke |
| Middle Stretch | Next 50 minutes | Investigation of the abbey |
| Climax | Last 29 minutes | Confrontation with Bathory |
Where It Falls Short
“The Nun” is not a failure of ambition. It knows exactly what it wants to be: a horror film that leans on atmosphere and jump scares. It just fails to deliver on that promise. The characters are flat, the scares are predictable, and the payoff never arrives. The film is most effective when it is quiet and still, letting the shadows and the silence do the work. It is least effective when it tries to be loud and frantic, which is most of the time.
The production values are solid. The abbey looks convincingly decrepit, the lighting is moody, and the performances are earnest even when they are misguided. None of that saves the movie from being a forgettable entry in a franchise that has produced far better films.
The Verdict
“The Nun” is a missed opportunity. It has all the ingredients of a great horror film: a creepy setting, a supernatural threat, and a premise that could have been genuinely terrifying. Instead, it settles for being merely unpleasant. The scares are cheap, the characters are thin, and the payoff is hollow. It is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be and fails to become it.
The movie is best described as a case study in how not to make a horror film. It takes a potentially rich idea and drains it of life through poor pacing, weak characterization, and a villain that is never truly frightening. It is a film that will be forgotten quickly, and it deserves to be.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
