THE NUN
If you’ve ever been for a scroll through the movies on Amazon Prime you’ll know that direct-to-DVD never died it just moved to Prime Video. They boast a library of 7,000 titles and I reckon 60% of them are knock-offs of the Conjuringuniverse. The Conjurings and their spin-offs, your Annabelles and Curse of La Llorona and The Nun, are to the streamers what knock-off Disney movies were to VHS bargain bins at a 90s market stall. They’ve got titles that can be slightly altered to trick unsuspecting viewers into thinking they’re getting the real deal.
Search The Nun on Prime and you’ll also get Nun’s Curse, Bad Nun, The Parish, and my favourite: Conjuring The Devil. They’ve all come out in the years since The Nun, they all use basically the exact same picture of a demonic nun, and they all use the Conjuring font. Do you want to fork out for the real Nun or just watch the one with the tagline ‘She Will Pray For You’ but the words ‘Pray For’ have been crossed out and replaced with ‘Prey On’.
While The Nun might not be a very smart movie, or even a particularly coherent one, it's pretty fun. It’s set in 1952 and follows a Father and a young nun who have been sent by the Vatican to investigate the goings on at an abbey in Romania. There is – and this will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone – a demon mucking about causing all sorts of strife.
If movies have to be bad – and let’s face it, some movies do have to be bad – I am very happy with them being bad in this kind of way. It’s goofy, sure, but it looks good and there are a few jump scares in there. There are plenty of bad horror movies that look horrendous, whole films of somebody throwing butchers offcuts at actors who wouldn’t graduate level one at even the most generous of improv schools.
Where would I fit into this demons possessing nuns in a century’s old abbey movie? Well, the abbey was built in the Middle Ages by a Duke who loved the occult and summoned the demon which the nuns now have to keep at bay. There is absolutely no way I would go into that abbey, but if you think I could live in that village and not talk about that Duke to everybody who passed through then you’re sorely mistaken.
IF I WERE IN 'THE NUN' I WOULD: BUTT IN EVERY TIME I HEARD SOMEBODY IN THE VILLAGE TALKING ABOUT THE VISITING PRIEST AND NUN BY SAYING "YEAH, WELL I MET THEM AND THEY DIDN'T SEEM VERY NICE TO ME."
