THE NUN II (2023)

Studio:   New Line Cinema
Director: Michael Chaves
Writer:    Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, Akela Cooper
Producer: Peter Safran, James Wan
Stars:    Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Storm Reid, Anna Popplewell, Bonnie Aarons, Suzanne Bertish, Katelyn Rose Downey

Review Score:

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Summary:

After a string of gruesome clergy deaths, Sister Irene is enlisted to combat Valak once again when the demon takes possession of the man who previously saved her life.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

At a church in Tarascon, France, in 1956, the demon Valak terrorizes Father Noiret and altar boy Jacques with paranormal activity before immolating the priest. Valak then resumes possession of Maurice "Frenchie" Theriault, who saved Sister Irene's life four years earlier at Saint Carta. Maurice goes on to become a handyman at St. Mary's boarding school where he befriends Irish teacher Kate and Kate's young daughter Sophie, who is regularly bullied by classmates Simone and Celeste.

Possessed by Valak, Maurice kills a child making deliveries to the school. Meanwhile, Sister Irene has a nightmare in which a possessed Maurice asks her for help.

Cardinal Conroy visits Sister Irene at her Italian convent to tell her about a series of gruesome priest and nun deaths, including Father Noiret's. Based on the pattern's Romanian origin and westward movement through Europe, Cardinal Conroy concludes Valak has returned. With Father Burke now dead, Conroy tasks Irene with investigating the matter since she is the only person left alive who directly dealt with Valak.

Troubled young nun Sister Debra, whom the Reverend Mother previously asked Irene to take under her wing, sneaks away to join Irene's trip to France. Having doubts about her faith, Debra explains that she hopes to witness a miracle firsthand.

Simone and Celeste lock Sophie inside St. Mary's chapel, which has been off limits since headmistress Madame Laurent's son Cedric died in there during wartime bombings, to play a game called "Defy the Devil," which involves staring at a stained-glass window featuring a red-eyed goat. While alone, Sophie has a frightening encounter with Valak before Maurice gets her out. Sophie later has another Valak encounter and also observes Maurice becoming momentarily entranced.

At the church in Tarascon where Father Noiret died, Irene and Debra notice a portrait of Saint Lucy, a martyr whom pagans tried to set on fire, but would not burn, before having her eyes gouged out. From another nun, Irene learns her former friend Maurice was present when the priest died, but he left the next day. Irene explains to Debra how Maurice rescued her during her experience with Valak, which must have been when the demon entered his body and escaped.

Irene experiences two visions of the altar boy Jacques. In the first one, Jacques shows Irene a distinct rosary. In the second, Jacques leads Irene to a newspaper stand where Valak emerges from a collage of magazine images. While the demon chokes her, Irene sees a vision of Saint Lucy being murdered in front of a fire. Irene also sees Saint Lucy holding an ornate box. Irene falls unconscious.

Madame Laurent finds Maurice standing entranced in front of the chained chapel door. After sending him away, Laurent enters the chapel and has a ghostly encounter with her dead son Cedric. Valak uses the boy's ghost to beat Madame Laurent to death.

After recovering, Irene tells Debra that her vision revealed Valak wants an ancient relic and is using Maurice to find it. Debra passes along Noiret's rosary that Jacques delivered earlier. Connecting a symbol on the rosary to a photograph of one of Valak's victims, Irene realizes they have to find out what the symbol means.

At the Catholic Archives in Palais des Papes, librarian Father Ridley identifies the symbol as Saint Lucy's family crest. Ridley tells Irene and Debra that Valak's recent victims were descendants of Saint Lucy, and their bloodline had been protecting Lucy's eyes as a holy relic. Theorizing Valak was once an angel that God stripped of power, Valak can regain that power through the eyes. However, Irene could in turn use the relic to banish Valak back to Hell. Ridley's research reveals that the eyes were last possessed by Jean-Paul Redar, a monk at the monastery that became St. Mary's school in Aix-en-Provence.

Irene confesses to Debra that she experiences visions just like her mother did. Irene's father believed her mother was crazy and had her institutionalized. Irene never saw her again.

Valak attacks Maurice, Kate, and Sophie. Irene and Debra arrive at St. Mary's to warn Maurice that Valak has been controlling his body. Maurice becomes possessed and attacks the two nuns. Irene and Debra subdue Maurice and restrain him with ropes.

Kate and Sophie take Irene and Debra to the chapel where they use light shining through the red-eyed goat image to locate the relic's burial spot in the floor. While the women dig up the ornate box containing Saint Lucy's eyes, the goat supernaturally manifests as a creature that terrorizes girls at the school, including Simone and Celeste.

Maurice breaks free from his restraints to attack again. Sophie uses the relic to get away from Maurice. Sophie gives the relic to Irene, who also uses it to stop Maurice. However, Maurice grabs the box, causing Valak to separate from him and attack.

Valak levitates Irene in the air and sets her on fire like Father Noiret, but she does not burn. A vision reveals Irene's mother and therefore Irene are also descendants of Saint Lucy.

While Valak directs Maurice to continue his attack, Irene and Debra pray together. Their prayers vanquish Valak, and seemingly release Maurice from demonic possession. However, as Irene watches Maurice walk away with Kate and Sophie in the aftermath, a concerned expression crosses her face.

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Review:

Among some family members and a few friends, I'm somewhat known for having an unusually sharp memory. About certain things, anyway. Growing up, I never thought much of it. I assumed everyone's minds worked the same way mine did. Over time though, I saw enough expressions of confounded surprise, even hints of fear, at how accurately I could recall precise details from something that happened 35 years earlier that I gathered it was actually an atypical ability.

Unfortunately, that ability seems specific to personal life events, and doesn't always extend to a lot of the media I consume. At least not to the hundreds of horror films I've seen since I started reviewing them in 2013. Every time I go into my archive to log a new entry, I can find ten titles I couldn't tell you the first thing about. Sometimes I'll even read an entire review I wrote X years ago and still wonder, "What the Hell was this movie?" I may as well be reading it in a foreign language for how unfamiliar something suddenly is to me.

I used to assume this was a natural consequence of aging, or early signs of hereditary dementia starting to settle in. Just as likely, maybe all those glasses of whiskey and beer finally pickled key parts of my brain.

Nowadays, I'm equally inclined to think that I'm not forgetting these movies so much as never really remembering them in the first place. That's because, particularly when we're talking about mass-market fright films built by big studios for mainstream audiences, these movies are made to be marketable more than they're made to be memorable. So much current content just sort of "is," often rocketing in one ear and right out the other at warp speed, and our minds have too few terabytes of storage to bother filing away every single thing.

"The Nun II" reaffirmed this notion. Before starting the movie, I skimmed the top of my head to see what I recalled from the first film. I remembered Valak, of course. I remembered Taissa Farmiga as a young nun. I also remembered a dark-haired priest teaming up with Taissa to take down the demon. But I couldn't come up with any other characters or distinct plot points that stood out to scream, "Remember me?"

In fact, it wasn't until a good way into "The Nun II's" first act, when I paused to re-read the synopsis of "The Nun" I wrote in 2018 (review here), that I learned one of the main characters, Maurice, carries over from the first film. Perhaps face blindness is now part of my problem too. Yet there I was staring at a man who played a major part in the original, and finished that film under Valak's possession in a direct setup for this sequel, and I had no idea I'd previously spent two hours with him inside the Conjuring Universe already.

I suspect I'm going to encounter this same situation with the inevitable "The Nun III" since this second film also features forgettable faces filling inconsequential characterizations. Joining Taissa Farmiga's Sister Irene in her second hoedown with hellspawn is Storm Reid as Sister Debra, a young nun experiencing a cursory crisis of faith. It's 50/50 if she'll be the first "oh yeah, her" my brain has trouble picturing, or if it will be Anna Popplewell's Irish schoolteacher Kate, an inclusion whose primary purpose is either to be a love interest for Maurice or to simply serve as the mother to a girl whose presence only intends to amp up "endangered child" tension.

Valak has another MacGuffin for a motivation this time around. By taking control of Maurice, the Demon Nun sets out to locate a whatchamacallit that possess the power to restore the gifts God once gave her before becoming a fallen angel. Whether the script had no place for him or the actor simply did not return, Sister Irene's previous partner Father Burke supposedly died offscreen between the two films. So, she and Sister Debra are on their own to save a French boarding school from Valak's murderous wrath.

Drenched in dark atmosphere coming courtesy of crumbling cathedrals and cobblestoned European locations, "The Nun II" supplies copious creeps, albeit in a more superficial than substantial way. Several scenes seem to have been written as "So-and-so tiptoes toward a shadow," with that shadow predictably hiding a supernatural encounter engineered to make jittery viewers jump in their seats.

To be sure, those jumps generally work. Virtually every chapter in "The Conjuring" oeuvre contains at least one cleverly creative gotcha. For "The Nun II," it's a sleek sequence at a newspaper stand where Valak bursts at Irene from a flurry of flipping magazine pages. Director Michael Chaves clearly studied at the James Wan School of Spooks, effectively echoing the similar painting sequence from "The Conjuring 2" (review here). Some horror fans eschew Wan's style, although they'd be hard pressed to explain how such scenes aren't functionally terrifying in a cinematic sense.

Which is why "The Nun II" grabs a generous three-star score despite narrative thinness. Remember, franchise frighteners are built to be marketable, not memorable. And when you're in the market for slicky-produced paranormal activity populated by attractive actors following formula, you'll find that market continues to be dominated by the box office success of "The Conjuring" franchise, where "The Nun" movies have carved themselves a nice corner. The IP holders know exactly how to attract average moviegoers. "The Nun II' exemplifies that simple approach with an immediately appealing little morsel that might not stay in one's belly, but doesn't have much cause to become a fully satisfying meal.

I just pray there isn't a quiz anytime soon about who starred in it, which people they played, or what exactly happened. It's only been a matter of moments and most of those details have already left my memory. I can only imagine what faint wisps of "The Nun II" might remain in five years. Should my experience with the first film be any indication, it probably won't take one-tenth of that time before my mind tags all of it for deletion.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 60

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