The Nun II came out a few years ago in 2023 and honestly I went in expecting the worst after that first movie back in 2018 turned out to be not so great but turns out this one actually manages to be way better even tho thats not saying much since the bar was basically on the floor, something like "Annabelle Creation (2017)", into my journey of watching all the movies from this franchise its like most of the time the second movie is better so far but thats not the case for the main title but its something to discuss on another post. The Nun II develops in France where we see Valak just going completely nuts right from the start burning a priest alive inside a church, which was absolutely wild because the first movie barely showed the nun doing anything remotly violent. Taissa Farmiga is back as Sister Irene and she was still carrying the entire thing on her shoulders with the help of Frenchie guy, this time they pair her up with Sister Deborah who spends most of the movie being absolutely useless and this is not me being mean about it, the character literaly does nothing important until the very end when she suddenly remembers she has faith. The boarding school setting could have been way more interesting but they wasted it on boring daytime scenes with these awful bully girls who I actually wanted Valak to rip apart, those kids were so annoying that when the goat demon showed up I was kinda rooting for it even though thats probably not what the movie wanted me to feel.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10160976/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
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Maurice who everyone called Frenchie in the first movie is back and he was the one possessed by Valak this whole time, which we find out pretty early but the movie still pretends its some big mystery even tho we literally see him twitching in mirrors and snapping peoples necks left and right, he was getting all this work in the background, what I like the most about the movie is that even though I was aware of everything it was still interesting, there was buildup into it. But the whole possession thing gets confusing because at the end of the first movie we saw Valak go into him but that same movie also showed Valak still attacking Irene seperately, so how the hell does that work did the demon just make a copy of itself or is it pulling some multiverse nonsense that nobody bothered to explain??!!. Storm Reid plays this young nun Deborah whos losing her faith and they try to make it this big character but it falls completely flat, she was just there to ask dumb questions and be scared until the climax when she suddenly believes in God again. The demon is searching for Saint Lucys eyes which are burred somewhere in the boarding school and apprently these eyes are super powerfull, but the movie never really explains why a demon would even be able to use something holy like shouldnt God have some kind of protection on his saints relics to prevent exactly this kind of situation from happening, I mean this because we not talking about a bazooka that can be use by the good or bad guys, we talking about something holy unless Valak could some how infect this eyes and use them on his favor, idk this is just me making things up because the movie didnt gave any details on how that works.
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The scares in this are definitly an upgrade from the first one, that magazine stand scene from the trailer is fine I guess but they already spoiled it so by the time it happens your just sitting there waiting for it instead of being suprised, they should have skip it from the trailer. What actually worked was that whole chapel sequence with the goat demon showing up, that thing looked so messed up and wrong in a way that its going to shock you, even when it doesnt make much sense why a completely different demon just shows up randomly without any explanation, is this Valak soldier?. The movie tries to do this thing where Valak can be in multiple places at once possessing Maurice while also appearing as the nun and also somehow being a giant goat upstairs terrorizing little kids and makes me question if this demon is so powerful and can be everywhere at the same time why doesnt it just posses a couple of people to start looking for the damn eyes. That whole vision sequence where Irene sees everything unfold through flipping magazine pages goes on forever and gives her way to much information, she literally figures out that Maurice is possessed and that the demon wants Saint Lucys eyes and where its headed next all from seeing some random images, which is convenient as hell but makes things too easy, was like the writers speed run the mystery through a big info dump.
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Its almost at the third part of the movie where things finally pick up but its also where the movie completely falls apart logic wise, Sophie the young girl finds the eyes first and they start glowing when she is holding them which is weird because Irene is actually related to Saint Lucy but the eyes dont do shit for her. They tie up Maurice in some random alcove instead of bringing him down to the chapel where they could actually watch him, then he obviously breaks free and starts chasing everyone because of course he does. The goat demon is still running around upstairs and instead of helping Valak find the eyes its just scaring children for no reason, like this is supposed to be the ultimate evil trying to gain unimaginable power but it keeps getting distracted by side quests, although the scenes still look scary so for me all start falling apart after I watch the movie when I actually start to break it down, so in resume those where cool scenes though just leave your brain at the door. Its when Valak finally gets the eyes the movie acts like its game over and the nun becomes super powerful floating around and lifting Irene into the air to burn her alive, except we literally saw Valak do the exact same thing to that priest at the beginning of the movie before it even had the eyes so what exactly changed. Turns out Irene cant be burned because she was a descendant of Saint Lucy who was fireproof, well Im not so sure about it so its for the lols only, but yeah the fact that Irene cant get burn didnt have enough context for me.
Now the ending felt too simple for everything else I had seen from the movie and kinda dumb it down when Irene and Deborah start praying real hard and somehow turn entire barrles of wine into the blood of christ which explodes everywhere and burns Valak. First of all this boarding school used to be a monastary that was sold to a winery that then became a school but somehow theres still dozens of wine barrels just chilling in the basement after all these years, I know in Europe in some places wine is more than just alcohol so lets that slide but its just too convenient. The movie did mention earlier that you need actual faith to make the wine transmutation work but Deborah spent 90 percent of the movie saying she doesnt believe in God so how the hell did flip the switch, I could only count this as the last moment before death type of wish. They defeat Valak with the blood of christ which is the same thing they used in the first movie except that time it didnt actually work because the demon just possessed Maurice and escaped, so why would it work better this time around. Maurice survives and walks away with the mom and daughter like everything is fine even tho the post credits scene from the first movie already showed us that Ed and Lorraine Warren had to exorcise him later, meaning the demon is still in there and these idiots just let him leave without checking. The very last scene tries to connect everything to the Conjuring movies by showing the Warrens getting a call about the case but it dosent make any sense timeline wise and honestly feels like they just shoved it in there for fan service so in conclusion so far, sequels are better but connection between movies doesnt fell force. Its a 7 out of 10 for me watchable if you are looking for some drama and get scared here and there but completely forgettable, a great one time watch, this movie also did better than the first Nun movie.
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