After so many of these Conjuring spin-off movies have come out, it’s easy to forget where they started and why the first two Conjuring movies were so good. If your introduction to the ever-expanding franchise was one of these spin-offs, I wouldn’t be surprised if you wrote it off entirely. Aside from one surprisingly entertaining Annabelle movie, every spin-off film in the franchise has been mediocre or worse. The Nun was the first of these movies that fell well below a passing grade for me as a forgettable spook-show. I struggled to recall the day after I watched it, in fact. So, I didn’t exactly have high expectations for The Nun II. As the title of this article suggests, it still managed to fall below those exceedingly low expectations.

Pros

• Makeup effects and costumes are acceptable; they actually have people wear clothing and hair from the era in which the story is supposed to be taking place

• Bonnie Aarons is still good as the titular nun demon with her spooky expressions

• The main child actor, Katelyn Rose Downey, does a decent job

Cons

• Acting from a majority of the cast is mediocre or worse

• Script is filled with bad dialogue and characters doing stupid things for the sake of scares

• All the moments that would be scary are ruined by an overabundance of the nun or just excess in the scene itself

• Plot is a meandering mess with a climax that you just have to accept

• Visual effects are unimpressive

• Nearly two hours long with a plot that could barely handle 60 minutes

Plot & Thoughts

The Nun II begins somewhere in France during the 1950s (I cannot be bothered to remember these places because it doesn’t really matter). A priest does his usual mass with his congregation and is assisted by a young boy. After the processions conclude, the boy gets scared by a ball bouncing in the dark and a glass shattering. When he tells the father, spooky things happen and the priest spontaneously bursts into flames before a shadowy figure is shown walking down the street and the title screen appears. From here the two groups of main characters are introduced.

Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), the heroine of the previous film, is settling into a peaceful life assisting other nuns at a secluded nunnery somewhere in Europe (who cares where). Debra (Storm Reid) is a young new member of the sisterhood who doesn’t really feel like she fits in and has faith issues. She tells a brief story to Irene about how she experienced racism in Mississippi without providing any real details—because it’s required by Hollywood law that a black character in a modern movie reminds the audience about racism at every opportunity. Soon, Irene is brought to a cardinal who tells her to investigate a string of deaths that have been happening across Europe because they believe the nun demon has returned. She sets off to find the demon and vanquish it, and Debra joins to help, despite Irene’s warnings. Meanwhile, at a girl’s boarding school in France, the heroic handyman from The Nun, Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), has found a similar job as the groundskeeper for the school. He’s friendly towards a shy girl named Sophie (Katlyn Rose Downey) and her mother/teacher Kate (Anna Popplewell). Oh, also spooky things are happening around town and Maurice is at the center of it.

Where to start with this movie? The Nun II is a boring, slow, plodding mess. The highest praise I can give its writing is that at least it understands the concept of foreshadowing. There really isn’t much to the story of The Nun II that justifies the 110-minute runtime. It acts like there’s a mystery after Irene immediately solves it. As soon as she hears that the demon has returned, she comes to the correct conclusion that Maurice was possessed by it in the last movie. Perhaps, if they hadn’t shown the moment this occurred in the previous film, it would be easier to craft a mystery around it for the audience, but the cat was already out of the bag years ago. The only mysteries for Irene to solve are the current location of Maurice and a symbol on the rosary belonging to the crispy pop-tart priest from the beginning. I guess, despite their deep bond as friends, they never kept contact and simply using phones to find out where he was wouldn’t suffice. She has to travel across Europe with her spunky Sister Debra to follow the clues to Maurice’s location. Since the audience already knows where he is and that he’s the possessed individual, where is the suspense supposed to come from to keep the story engaging? It doesn’t feel like there’s a race against time or that there is truly any urgency until the final act, which is when all the main characters finally meet.

Until the final act of The Nun II, if we’re not watching Irene investigate a mystery that has been solved already, we must endure the typical “bully the shy kid” tropes with the foolishly naïve Sophie and the mean girls who suddenly disappear from the movie for about thirty minutes in the second act. Maurice is helpful to the young girl and Jonas Bloquet manages to make the character sympathetic, even if he’s not doing anything special or interesting. There are multiple scenes that are meant to set up the payoffs in the final act, but the writing is so inefficient with clunky dialogue, all these ambling scenes feel pointless. Excuse the digression, but I also don’t think a glass window with a goat on it justifies having a goat-man demon running around the school in the final act, terrorizing the side characters we all forgot about. I have an excuse to use this image in a review, at least.

It’s not like the acting helps the writing much in these moments, either. Storm Reid is a flat, dull actress who is incapable of sounding like a person from an era that occurred before she was born. Debra is supposed to be from Mississippi and this is the 1950’s, but she sounds like someone working in Hollywood in the 2020s when she talks. Maybe I’m supposed to think she’s stunning, brave, and brilliant because she’s only 20 and in the Last of Us T.V. show I didn’t watch, but she just sucks here. I also think Taissa Farmiga is not good in this. She wasn’t anything special in the first Nun film, but her performance here is mostly just making sad and shocked faces throughout the first two acts, and then overacting and shrieking in the final act. When she calls out “Sophie!” during the climax, her voice breaks in a way that would really be fitting if she had spent more than five minutes with the kid and developed a real connection with her. Maybe she’s just that concerned for all of God’s children.

The last thing I’ll say before wrapping this review up is that The Nun II is just not scary, for a particular reason: less is more, and more is less. The nun demon is everywhere in this film and we see her so often that it ruins the buildup that occurs within a scene that had any potential. We all know what the nun looks like, but the film would be better if it just showed her hands and stopped there. Even when she doesn’t explicitly appear, the film just has to hammer everything in with its wrecking ball that has the words “I hate subtlety” engraved on its side. For example, there’s one scene in which Irene is looking at a magazine rack in the street and everything becomes deserted. Wind suddenly picks up and starts blowing the pages open, revealing scary faces and morbid imagery. This scene has potential to be unsettling if it just shows something unpleasant for a bit and then cuts away. Unfortunately, it goes on and on, with more intense music and wind, taking its time to form the shape of the nun in the magazine rack out of the random pictures. Again, we know what the nun looks like. Irene knows what it looks like. Irene knows that it’s the same demon from the first movie already by the time this scene occurs. Are we doing anything other than wasting time and squandering potential?!

TL;DR

The Nun II is a weak sequel to an already weak entry in a tired, decaying franchise that started off incredibly strong in 2013. All the scenes that had any potential to be interesting or scary fall flat due to the lack of creativity and subtlety. The acting is pretty poor across the board. And the plot is so dull and slow that it makes the 110 minutes feel like an eternity. I don’t know how much breath is left in the Conjuring franchise, but I suspect we’re reaching the end of everyone’s patience. Movies like this are going to drive fans away until there will be nun left.