The Nun II
WARNER BROSThis piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike,
the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Valak is back, against all odds. After the disaster that was The Nun, one would think Warner Bros. wouldn’t be stupid enough to greenlight a sequel, and yet they did because the first one made money. Thankfully, The Nun II (Nun Harder) is a much better movie than the nearly unwatchable first. It has a more visually averse language and greater performances from its leads, even if the scares are as conventional as they come.
The movie picks up two years after the first left off, with Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) tasked by her convent to investigate a series of deaths occurring in Europe through the Catholic Church. She quickly learns they are linked to Valak (Bonnie Arons), who has returned from the shadows in the quest for a sacred relic. With the aid of Sister Debra (Storm Reid), Irene discovers that Valak is currently inhabiting Maurice (Jonas Bloquet) in the search for the relic.
Director Michael Chaves is no stranger to The Conjuring universe, having previously helmed The Curse of La Llorona and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. While those two movies were fairly forgettable and mostly unimpressive from a technical point of view, Chaves seems more confident here and has tons of fun crafting large-scale action sequences with cinematographer Tristan Nyby, giving a more refined language to the movie than it would’ve had if Corin Hardy helmed the second installment.
These sequences are far more visually striking and feel urgent within the context of the story, as opposed to being purely attractional like the first film, and turned a relatively scary side character from The Conjuring 2 into a non-stop jumpscare machine whose only purpose is to surprise the main characters with consistent loud shrieks, but nothing else. A particularly impressive scene happens during the climax, where a bell from a tower falls to the ground and produces a thick cloud of smoke, which Irene travels directly inside, or the opening scene, which sees Valak set a priest on fire, giving the movie the right energy to hook the audience in – alongside the classic New Line Cinema logo audiences haven’t seen on the big screen in ages.
However, these moments don’t prevent Chaves from making his film a jumpscare festival. The aforementioned scene contains lots of jumpscares and even some other technically proficient ones can’t overcome the very predictable scares the two other people in the audience saw a mile away. No one was scared, even if what was on screen looked extremely competent. The usual clichés are there: the squeaking door that moves by itself, certain elements of a room obscured by shadows, objects moving slowly, and possessed entities staring at protagonists in the eyes before BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! The audience is now deaf, especially in IMAX.
It also doesn’t help that, apart from highly extensive jumpscare-filled sequences – the magazine stand scene is excellent, however – the movie does very little to interest viewers in the human drama, especially when focused on Maurice and the students at the boarding school. Bloquet’s performance as “Frenchie” is miles better – literally a night and day difference – than the first, but his relationship with the students, particularly Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey) and her mother, Kate (Anna Popplewell), whose arc is as conventional as it comes and seems plucked out of every possession movie ever made, is without much consideration for originality.
However, Chaves balances it out with Irene’s arc, with Farmiga also improving upon her character in this installment from her trite performance in the original. Screenwriters Akela Cooper, Ian Goldberg, and Richard Naing make Irene a fully-formed character with a more developed arc and larger stakes than in the original. This results in a far more engaging installment, with Stom Reid balancing out the franchise veterans with a new character that brings a bit more fun to the climax than without her.
Speaking of the climax, that’s where Akela Cooper has always excelled at (see Malignant), and boy does she deliver. The best word to describe it without spoiling a thing is mental. If the first hour or so of The Nun II has pretty dour energy, it’s because the film's last act is so frenetic in its pacing, frights, and cinematography. Everything cranks up to eleven and saves what came before from being yet another forgettable entry in The Conjuring franchise. Yes, it does run a bit too long, especially as Irene and Debra try to find a way to exorcise Valak out of Maurice, but it remains largely entertaining, even if the scares are a tad formulaic. In the context of the climax, it didn’t necessarily matter, because its energy was so high that it couldn’t disappoint.
Because of these elements, The Nun II is a surprisingly enjoyable entry in The Conjuring universe, even if it’s not without its flaws. However, it’s a far superior outing than the crap Warner Bros. shoved down the audience’s throats for so long that it honestly feels like a masterpiece at this point. Who knows if James Wan will return for The Conjuring: Last Rites, but here’s hoping it’ll be as good, if not better, than The Nun II.