The Nun 2 Parent Guide

Having banished the nun-clothed demon Valak in the cursed monastery of Saint Cartha in Romania, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) returns to the tranquility of her small French Abbey. She settles in and makes friends with a new girl, Sister Debra (Storm Reid), only to have the Church dispatch new orders.

A series of brutal suicides in churches, starting in Romania and working west indicate that Irene may not have banished the demon after all. Since Irene is the only person who has experience with this demon, Church leaders want her to go and investigate how this evil entity is moving so freely through Europe. Meanwhile, Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), who helped Irene in Romania, has also settled in France, taking a position as a caretaker at a girls’ school in a former church. He’s also trying to get his life back, but lately he’s been experiencing strange seizures, and they’ve been getting worse since he left Romania…

I don’t want you to get the impression that I hate everything all the time – this movie does have some good ideas. It manages to occasionally generate some real tension and is a little more creative with some of the jump scares than I expected. Unfortunately, it runs out of good ideas in the first half hour, and the rest of the movie is just an increasingly uninteresting quest for the magical MacGuffin which will solve all our problems.

I think the hollowness of the film reflects a larger problem, namely that the screenwriter doesn’t understand how to develop characters. The main characters all have struggles which could have paid off into personal development – Irene with her past trauma, Debra with an ongoing faith crisis, to name two – but not only are these struggles not significant to the story, they cease to be important the moment the characters mention them. Normally, a script would use this as an opportunity to show that the characters had to come to terms with their struggles in order to achieve their goals. Not so here, since all the characters need to do is find the MacGuffin – I mean, our saintly relic. Problem solved. No need for personal growth here. Just keep your wimple straight and go with the flow.

Parents might also be surprised to see an R-rated movie with a “B” grade for profanity, but unless I dozed off in the middle, the only issue there is occasional terms of deity. At least, as far as language is concerned. The violence, on the other hand, is much more intense, with immolations, bludgeonings, and impalements shown in graphic detail. Those gruesome elements combined with dark occult themes make this a poor choice for younger or sensitive viewers. Fans of the increasingly overstuffed Conjuring cinematic universe, on the other hand, will likely have some fun with this two-hour chunk of dramatically-shot Catholic-themed fan fiction – not that I understand why.