The Nun movie review: This prequel to The Conjuring 2 tries, but fails at being horrifying

In a secluded convent in the mountains of Romania, we see two nuns make their way to a room, the door to which bears the legend “God ends here”. The nuns are terrified, but the older one boldly pushes forward; they must find a way to end the evil that resides beyond the door, she reminds her younger colleague. Soon enough, amid unearthly wails and howls, she reemerges, bloody and in the maws of a demon, flinging an ancient key at the younger nun, before being pulled back inside to her death. The young nun grabs the key and runs to her room, takes hold of a prepared noose tied to her bedpost. Then, just as the room’s door is flung open and the cross above her bedstead turns upside down, she pulls the rope tight around her neck and leaps out the window. So begins The Nun — and those first few minutes are about the spookiest you’ll encounter in its entire hour-and-a-half runtime. The rest of the film — the fifth in the Conjuring universe, and perhaps ranked in that spot too in terms of its quality — is a formulaic tale that employs all the clichés of the horror genre to very little effect. [caption id=“attachment_5136421” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Still from The Nun[/caption] Back at the convent, the nun’s hanging body is discovered by a young villager who drops by every once in a while to leave supplies. Word of the suicide reaches the Vatican, which sends in its best investigator — or at the very least an investigator — a Father Burke (Demián Bichir), to find out what caused the nun to take such an extreme step, and also to ascertain if the land on which the convent stands “is still holy”. A euphemism, as it turns out. Father Burke is also ordered to take along on his mission a young postulate — a Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) — said to be “familiar with the territory”. Another euphemism. Father Burke and Sister Irene travel to Romania, find the villager Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) who discovered the dead nun, and show up at the near-deserted convent — only to find themselves in the midst of some very disturbing phenomena. A sinister presence roams the convent in the garb of a nun, an evil force so intense that defeating it is near-impossible. This nun-demon is called Valak — a name you may recognise from The Conjuring 2 — the events of which movie take place roughly 20 years after those depicted in this prequel. As Valak goes about terrorising Father Burke, Sister Irene and Frenchie, they must find a way to send her back to the hell from which she emerged. That should make for gripping viewing, but isn’t. The Conjuring films and the Anabelle spin-offs work in part because of their setting — everyday suburban homes and families, victimised by a demonic presence such that even fetching a glass of water from your own kitchen come nightfall is to court peril. The Nun, for all its graveyards and sundry crosses, ancient stone castle and sinister sarcophagi, topped off with lots of ritualistic mumbo-jumbo, feels mostly like a farce. The background score adds to this gimmicky feeling at times, forcing us to pay attention to The Bad Thing That’s About To Happen On The Screen In The Very. Next. Minute. Will you jump out of your seat a few times? Sure. You’re bound to when a disembodied pair of bloody hands shoot out of the darkness and close around the protagonists’ throats. Apart from moments like those though, there’s very little to actually frighten you, and the “twist” at the end is taken chapter and verse from the ‘How To Make A Horror Movie’ textbook. The other elements of the story — Father Burke being haunted by a failed, past exorcism, Sister Irene’s ‘visions’, and Frenchie’s attempts at flirting with the novice nun — are too fleeting to make an impression. Director Corin Hardy treads turf that’s familiar to him from his previous film, The Hallow. Of the cast, Demián Bichir is pedestrian while Jonas Bloquet is charming. Taissa Farmiga, whose older sister Vera Farmiga plays demonologist Lorraine Warren in the Conjuring movies, is quite assured in her role as a nun-in-training whose faith is unwavering in the face of great evil. More than a year after Jordan Peele’s Get Out took on race relations in the guise of a horror film, The Nun seems like a substandard effort. Not all horror films need to be a nuanced examination of the human condition of course, but even as a simple good-vs-evil story, The Nun falls firmly on the bad end of the spectrum.