I love the "Conjuring" movies (especially the first two) but that's mostly because they were made by James Wan, who is as good at utilizing shadow and the empty part of the frame to maximum creepiness as virtually anyone who has ever stepped behind a camera. He's a true creepy craftsman, and I adore his work.

But I haven't bothered with any of the "Conjuring" universe spinoffs, mostly because Wan didn't direct them but also because I'm really not that interested in Annabelle. I've seen creepy doll movies before, and I don't really see how that subject could be made especially interesting. The opening sequence of the original "Conjuring" involving Annabelle was great, but I don't see myself caring about a whole movie (or three) about that doll. The super creepy demon nun from "Conjuring 2" however? THAT thing has potential! The sequences involving Valak from that film were deliciously creepy, and I was interested in finding out what that demon's deal was.

"The Nun" sort of explains what Valak's deal is...I guess. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this movie (and, honestly, I can't entirely remember Valak's origin...or even if that is actually touched upon here) but it involves a cursed convent in Romania (has anything good ever happened in Romania? No offense to any Romanians reading this) and a nun suicide that the Vatican sends a priest (Demian Bichir) and a novitiate who has not yet taken her vows (Taissa Farminga) to investigate.

There's barely any plot here, and that's the movie's biggest problem. The only character that really caught my interest was Frenchie, the horny French-Canadian delivery boy who discovered the dead nun. Jonas Bloquet brings some likable rogue energy to his role, and I liked his continuous attempts to lure Farminga* away from her vows. He and Farminga have pleasant chemistry together. Bichir can be highly entertaining in the right role, but he doesn't get much to do here. The story is basic as hell and the scares are pretty much one-note. Creepy nun imagery is essentially all this movie has in its arsenal. The opening sequence is fairly effective, but the movie doesn't really have anything else to offer and basically just repeats that sequence over and over ad nauseum. It doesn't help that we've seen this sort of Creepy Catholic stuff done far better by "The Exorcist", "The Omen", and tons of other movies. It's a real "been there, done that" situation and the movie doesn't really add anything novel to its threadbare concepts. It also commits the cardinal sin of taking a character that was fairly chilling (Valak) and making it boring through misuse. By about the halfway point, I found my attention wandering and none of the sequences really got under my skin no matter how many loud jump scares (the rest of the movie is super quiet, to the point where you kind of have to strain to hear dialogue, and then the creepy nun appearances are super loud in order to jar you when they occur...which is a pretty cheap way of goosing an audience, if you ask me) the movie threw at me.

"The Nun" should offer plenty of thematic density regarding Faith and Doubt and the Corruption of Religion (as the excellent, IMO anyway, "Immaculate" did) but the movie doesn't seem to be interested in ANY of that and bobs along on the surface instead, never digging into its situations or characters. Thus the potentially spooky imagery feels hollow and pointless. It's about as effective as someone popping out and yelling "Boo" at you over and over for ninety minutes. At first, sure, that'll startle you. But when it keeps happening in the same way over and over every five minutes it gets a hell of a lot less effective. In fact, it gets pretty boring to be honest. Things liven up a little in the final act when shotguns get introduced, but otherwise this is immensely skippable and doesn't give me a lot of incentive to check out the rest of the "Conjuring" Extended Universe.

*Casting Vera Farminga's younger sister as the lead of this movie just made me think that this was a younger version of the Lorraine Warren character. I kept expecting that to be the twist and, unfortunately, it wasn't. But why cast Vera Farminga's younger sister, who looks just like her, to play a different character within the same cinematic universe? It feels like a waste of natural resources...or confusing at the very least.