The movie opens on a couple nuns wandering through the catacombs of their monastery, complete with cardboard crosses and a layer of cold fog on the ground. It's the type of art direction that would do Ed Wood proud. The ladies search for something in order to fend off a demon terrorizing their home, and the scene ends with the one unsettling image in the whole movie: that of a dark floating nun slowly gliding down the hallway at night. Think Nosferatu, only less effective.
Later, we cut to the Vatican ordering Father Burke (Demian Bichir) to investigate the supernatural nunery in the secluded woods of Romania. Along the way, he is tasked with picking up an American postulate/soon-to-be-nun named Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga). She asks the priest why she is assigned to go on this journey with him, especially considering that she has never been to Romania before. Burke ponders whether or not it might become evident later on.... I am here to report right now that there is never an answer as to why she was asked to go. Moving on. In Romania, the two meet the comic relief named Frenchie, a horny Frenchman living in Romania to tend sheep or whatnot. He brings them to the monastery through long winding mountain roads and the cliched "we must walk from here" fork (the horse doesn't want to go any further...) Thus the "story" begins.
It's almost baffling how soon the "horror" begins, and by horror I refer to the jump scares accompanied by loud music and a laugh afterwards. The director makes practically no effort to build atmosphere, or set up the rules, or establish who is who and what is what. The movie feels almost exclusively like a run of deleted scenes. At one moment, Burke wakes up at night and follows a ghost to the cemetery, and then has a vision of himself being buried alive. Dream? Nope - cut to the man actually buried alive in a dark night scene. How did this happen? Immediately after we cut to Sister Irene, awakened by something and wandering the empty castle. She sees the demonic nun in a reflection, and then screams, and then moves on. On and on the film trudges. There is no story here. It's like a haunted house: you walk through and get a little scare in each new room, but there is no central plot you are following.
The film concludes with a baffling scenario in which a vial of the blood of Jesus Christ must be procured in order to drive the demon back to Hell (imagine a character explaining that in all seriousness, now imagine how hard my audience laughed at such a farce). I might have raised a couple of logical questions, such as "how can blood remain blood red and liquid after 2,000 years?" or "if the demon nun came up from Hell, then why is she only haunting this abandoned castle? Why not spread forth upon the earth?" To be honest, the finale of the film is just like the rest of it. It's beyond the point of "so bad it's good." This movie defies all logic, all scares, and comes out on the other side as an example of a visionless movie.
The feeling I had walking out of THE NUN wasn't disappointment. It wasn't boredom. It was almost a feeling of embarrassment - embarrassed at the filmmakers for making something so awful, embarrassed on their behalf for showing audiences something as subpar... We deserved better. I still think that "Hereditary" is the best film of the year so far, and that was a damn good horror movie. I suppose then that the only good thing to come from seeing THE NUN is now I can ask about future horror movies: On a scale of 'Hereditary' to 'The Nun,' how scary was it?
