Father Burke and novice, what the actual frack, Irene – a lot of people are calling her a nun this is incorrect, frack this movie is already entering shit stain territory and we haven’t even got into the movie yet – are tasked with visiting a secluded nunnery in Romania due to possible paranormal activity. Turns out the good Father is like a trouble shooter for Vatican City, hunting out supposed miracles and returning demons to whence they came. He isn’t totally successful in his endeavour and is carrying some baggage due to a past exorcism gone wrong. For her part Irene is a novice with possible powers, dear god not another Girl Boss. Anyways our duo arrive at a local village and find the nunnery is hard to get at and is cursed according to the locals. Luckily Frenchie, a local man of all trades, is on hand to lead the team up the mountains, through the mists, and across cemeteries to the lair of whatever might be causing issues. Who am I kidding, the nunnery is under attack from a demonic force. Anyways turns out Frenchie found a nun who had committed suicide by hanging outside the castle and is about the only contact with the outside world the nuns have. The local penguins, nun joke keep up folks, are harbouring a secret and doing their best to hinder the passage of the demon Valak into the world. Can Father Burke and probable Girl Boss Irene overcome, or are we getting a sequel?

Director Corin Hardy, famous for uhmm ... ah The Hallow (2015), gets his movie off to a pretty decent start. A couple of nuns are clearly battling evil and have a means of stopping it, naturally this doesn’t pan out as we wouldn’t have a movie. One Nun gets dragged away into the dark and the other flees to a room and locks the door, because that of course stops the minions of hell, they don’t like a locked door. Our Final Nun, is forced into committing suicide by hanging, in a scene that has definitely not been purloined from The Omen, and it’s here that we get our first problem with the movie, hello plot hole that I fell into and couldn’t get out of. So the Nun committing suicide isn’t the issue, the movie tells us it is a mortal sin, and the suicidal Nun is aware of this, thank God this movie hasn’t gone completely off the rails. Nope the issue is the demon of the week needs a body to possess to completely cross into the corporal world, uhmm what about the Nun that was dragged into the darkness? Nope writers don’t care, and we are too busy face palming. Okay that might just be me, the audience for this flick are not being selected on their critical abilities clearly. But still decent scary start to what is going down later in the flick.

The movie is neatly bracket by scenes involving those ever reliable shysters The Warrens. Let’s be honest Ed and Lorraine are corner pins of The Conjuring Universe, which this movie is a part of. So just in case the low attention span audience aren’t aware of this it’s kind of pushed into the viewer’s face. Does this help the movie, hell no takes the viewer out of the flow of the movie, and for those of us not indoctrinated into the Warren snake oil industry, is a second case of face palming as the bullshit starts building up. We have a series coming up on the whole Amityville thing, and spend some time pointing out how the Warrens are fooling the gullible. Hey check that out if interested, back to the beat.

Overall I was actually enjoying this movie once I had it pegged for what it was. A dated return to Hammer Horror tropes, with sudden shock scenes being used instead of atmosphere and tension. Hey why try to create something great when you can pump out yet another movie for quick cash in a franchise where the movies are forgotten within months of release. Sorry to Annabelle, but tough love around these parts mate! Don’t go into this flick if you are expecting something new; horror re-tread time folks, there’s nothing we haven’t seen before going down. So we get a string of sudden jump scenes in a spooky old castle, anyone else feel like their eyes are already rolling up? The strange thing here was there was a great horror movie lurking below the surface, if the Director had of given the movie time to breath we might have got something half decent, but hey the franchise we are in doesn’t know how to let the audience experience and discover for themselves.

Having pointed out the previous problems, there were a couple of scare tactics that actually worked for me. Okay they are not original, but when you are in the midst of a by the numbers Hollywood scare flick then you will pretty much take anything you can get. The whole buried alive and bell on a string was pretty neat as a concept, naturally the Director has to take it a step too far and hey face palm situation again. And of course the now you see her now you don’t evil Nun was a pretty cool idea, it isn’t overused and works when it needs to work, which is just as well as a lot of the other jump scenes are not happening in any sense of the word.

At least we get some mythology laid down that help the audience as the movie jumps from standard scene to standard scene. Seems some dude in the past used the castle to do some magic and managed to crack a portal into Hell, which naturally the demon Valak is using this new avenue to have a break from the fiery depths. Seems the resident Nuns having been fighting to keep Valak in check ever since they took over the castle. Now that must be a job of work. Thankfully the Nuns have a relic to help them in their battle, a sphere containing Jesus’s blood. Now beside the obvious biological issue, we’ll say Christ’s blood has properties everyone else’s blood doesn’t have, how come through the years the Nuns have singularly failed to close the portal to hell yet our team, oh shite spoilers, managed to do so within days of arriving at the haunted castle of doom. Do you want to face palm first, or leave it to me to do a double face palm?

At least the acting, while wrought, is half decent with no one staring at the camera or fluffing their lines. And it’s nice to see Vera Farmiga’s little sis Taissa getting a good meaty role. Hey no nepotism going down here, wash your mouth out if you are voicing that idea.

Guess I’ve covered this mid-range horror flick in enough depth. It’s an okay view if after a time killer, but is never going to effect the direction horror is going to take in the future. Another of this grind mill movies that Hollywood pump out year in year out to fill cinemas, or I guess in the modern age, to fill out streaming service offerings. I watch this one on Netflix and am pleased I didn’t pay good cash to go see it in the cinema. So you aren’t missing anything if you haven’t seen The Nun, but then again the movie is probably only going to appeal to The Conjuring franchise devotees. Bit of a time waster, you could do worse, but heck you could also do a hell of a lot better. If I had to sum up my feelings about this movie in one word, that word would be meh.