Director: Michael Chaves
Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Storm Reid, Anna Popplewell, Bonnie Aarons
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 110 mins

The Nun 2 is the latest in The Conjuring universe and a sequel to the 2018 spin-off. Valak (Bonnie Aarons), the titular demonic nun was first introduced in The Conjuring 2 to chilling effect but despite a talented cast and crew, The Nun was a trainwreck. The film’s jump scares were mechanical and weak, its editing extremely poor and the narrative paper-thin. Its only saving grace was its chilling atmosphere that director Corin Hardy failed to fully utilise. 

Director Michael Chaves helms this sequel, having already two films in the series under his belt – The Curse of La Llorona and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Chaves has proven a solid hand and there was a lot to like particularly with mainline Conjuring effort, but it’d be fair to say his scares are a few rungs below series mastermind James Wan or Annabelle: Creation director David F. Sandberg. 

The Nun 2 is set four years after the events of the first film and moves the action to France. Both Taissa Farmiga and Jonas Bloquet return as Sister Irene and Maurice, with Irene now serving in an Italian convent and Maurice in a French boarding school. Maurice is friendly with a young Irish girl named Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey) and her mother and teacher Kate (Anna Popplewell). After a priest is brutally murdered in a church in Tarascon, France, Sister Irene is set to investigate with Sister Debra (Storm Reid), a young novice.

The Nun 2 is a much stronger film than the first in the storytelling department but it still suffers from its fair share of problems. Starting with the positives, the film is edited coherently, unlike the first, where the scenes were often so short that the film felt like an extended trailer. Chaves also makes a much stronger effort to develop the characters and put them through an arc, even if they’re still rather generic. It’s also a reasonably good-looking film, slickly shot by cinematographer Tristan Nyby and although it’s not as memorable as it could have been, Marco Beltrami’s score has some exciting moments. Finally, the second half is entertaining in places and the concept of Malignant and M3gan writer Akela Cooper’s story is strong, even if the execution is rather ramshackle. 

Unfortunately, Chaves’ scares aren’t particularly effective and the film’s first hour is quite boring, as Sisters Irene and Debra try to catch up with the fact Valak still lives on in Maurice, which we learned at the close of The Nun. Much has been made of the more gory nature of elements of the film’s horror, but I didn’t find the film particularly violent or blood-curdling at all, even compared with other series entries. 

Although there’s a reasonable amount of ambition in Cooper’s story, the screenplay (Cooper in collaboration with Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing) is clunky. There’s some inexcusable exposition, an all-knowing librarian the nuns meet in their investigation who conveniently happens to know all the particulars of a Macguffin device they need and exactly how to defeat the demon is incredibly lazy. A revelatory line in the film’s climax relating to a mother’s eyes is also unintentionally laughable.  

Several characters are also severely short-changed. Despite a potentially interesting introduction where it is revealed Sister Debra has been sent to the church as a means of escaping the racial hell of 1950s Mississippi, the character isn’t given anything to do.  Anna Popplewell is also surprisingly awful as Kate with an unconvincing Irish accent. 

While The Nun 2 represents an improvement over its predecessor, it’s plagued by mostly ineffective scares, a tedious first hour and clumsy execution of the somewhat amiable storyline. It’s Chaves’ weakest effort in the series and the film’s existence as both a sequel and a prequel to The Conjuring hurts it as we already know the outcome of some of the film’s characters, which lessens one’s investment in the jeopardy they’re faced with. 

⭐⭐ (Poor)