“The Conjuring” universe’s most recent release, “The Nun,” came highly anticipated to James Wan fans and had big shoes to fill with high grossing prequels, including “Annabelle” and “The Conjuring.” Unfortunately, writers failed to deliver and instead put forward a lackluster story-line that was mediocre at best and failed to live up to expectations with its scarcity of any noteworthy suspense.
“The Nun” starts off promising enough with a hint of mystery as two nuns confront a demonic presence in a Romanian abbey but elaborate, barely answering questions the audience had about the villain debuted in “The Conjuring 2.”
One can only fault writing as the main culprit for the film’s flop, as even with strong leads including Taissa Farmiga and Demián Bichir, the fourth wall crumbled as the movie continued. The inclusion of random and evidently irrelevant supernatural encounters and elements of mythology only further confuse an already disappointed and frustrated audience, throwing them for a loop as they try to piece together two unrelated scenes.
The only quality of James Wan films, which up to now, seemed to be a consistently well done and reliable component of all his movies (whether speaking of “Insidious” installments or “The Conjuring” universe) is the use of sound effects and scores to give the audience frequent and cumulative bouts of terror. However, the failed use of deafening silence to achieve these same results only led to pitiful attempts at jump scares while movie-goers were left holding their breath waiting to see if the scene went anywhere.
In conclusion, as in any connected universe series of movies, they can’t all be Wonder Woman. You may end up with one that absolutely pales in comparison to other installments – in this case, “The Nun” is “Suicide Squad.” Just wait to see it on Netflix.
