The Nun 2: Movie Review

Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Storm Reid, Anna Popplewell, Bonnie Aarons, Katelyn Rose Downey
Director: Michael Chaves

If 2018's The Nun taught us anything, it was that the Conjuring cinematic universe could eke something out of any old scares to keep on conjuring up bums on seats.

So it is with The Nun 2, which picks up on the cliffhanger ending of the first film wherein Bloquet's amiable Maurice was shown to have been possessed by the spirit of evil demon Valak. This time, the demon's been leaving a trail of offed priests as it travels west from Romania seemingly in search of something.

Cue the return of Sister Irene (Farmiga, once again agog and aghast in equal measure throughout) at the behest of the Catholic bigwigs. Teamed up with novice nun Sister Debra (a woefully underused Storm Reid), the pair set off to try and banish the demon once and for all. But this time, Valak's set up shop in a boarding school for innocent girls in France...

The Nun 2 is surprisingly effective in some parts, and woefully rote in others.

There's a general atmosphere of unease used liberally throughout by Chaves and some on-the-money jump scares employed early on. A sequence involving a news stand in France's cobbled back alleyways shows such visual flair and panache that you have to double take to believe this is in a horror blockbuster.

But moments like it are too few and far in between.

As the Nun Detective Squad of Irene and Debra hunt Valak down, Chaves doubles down on the basic tenets of horror films that so proliferate the blockbuster genre - dark corridors, murky moments out of the corner of the frame, and a blasting OST are all deployed to eye-rolling effect. And deploying children once again to be the victims of the devil's minions holds diminishing returns.

It's perhaps depressing that with films like Talk To Me going back to basics, films like The Nun 2 seem content to go overboard when being sparing would be much more effective. With heavy exposition from The Catholic Archives (itself feeling like it's trying to launch a spinoff series), the film's lack of nuance (and even lack of The Nun itself) begins to destroy what good will it's garnered early on.

Come a third act where sound and bluster is thrown from every direction, The Nun 2's bad habits are more likely to annoy than genuinely terrify, as the overblown lore and inevitable back story scares off an audience rather than holds it in its thrall.

Much better when it's more nuanced and generally unsettling, The Nun 2's failings are on a par with its successes - it's not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination and shows flair for scares when it counts.