The Nun: -2018-

Played with eerie stillness by Bonnie Aaros (who reprises the role from The Conjuring 2 ), Valak is more than a jump scare. In The Nun , the demon is revealed as a fallen angel who was excommunicated from heaven and now seeks to corrupt holy ground. The iconic nun’s habit is a perverse mockery of faith—a wolf in sheep’s (or rather, wimple’s) clothing.

The Nun is a frustrating experience. It is visually spectacular and contains moments of genuine, nerve-jangling horror—the first descent into the monastery’s foggy cemetery is a masterclass in suspense. But it also represents the moment when The Conjuring universe began to prioritize spooky iconography over coherent storytelling. The Nun -2018-

The film’s fatal flaw, however, is its screenplay. Written by Gary Dauberman, the plot is a series of spooky set pieces strung together with logic that often unravels. Characters make inexplicably stupid decisions (splitting up in a demon-infested crypt, anyone?), and the lore is expanded in ways that feel rushed and contradictory to the original films. Furthermore, the overuse of the “holy blood” MacGuffin turns what could have been a profound spiritual battle into something closer to a video game side-quest. Played with eerie stillness by Bonnie Aaros (who

In the sprawling, shadow-filled universe of The Conjuring , few images have proven as instantly iconic as the pale, gaunt face of Valak, the demon in a nun’s habit. First glimpsed in The Conjuring 2 —a fleeting cameo that caused audiences to gasp—the character was so terrifying that Warner Bros. quickly greenlit a solo origin story. The result, 2018’s The Nun , directed by Corin Hardy, is a film of bold atmospherics and gothic dread, even if it struggles to escape the long shadow of its parent franchise. The Nun is a frustrating experience

The film wisely gives Valak less screen time than the audience might want. When we do see the figure standing motionless at the end of a corridor or emerging from a misty graveyard, the effect is chilling. The problem is that the film relies too heavily on the image of Valak, rather than the psychology of the fear. Too often, a sudden loud noise or a jolting camera movement is substituted for genuine, slow-burning tension.