I’ve watched more than my fair share of horror movies, and I like to believe that I am a fair judge of which ones are good and bad. And it is with that wealth of knowledge that I say that Evil Nun falls into the latter category. And for me this was disappointing, because based on a cover art which has a pretty intimidating picture of a possessed nun, I got my hopes up that I was going to be in for a heart-pumping scare-fest. I know that I’m not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but typically when following that lesson, the moral is not to assume something will be bad based off a first impression. How ironic that I saw the cover and assumed that the film would be good. How very ironic indeed. I won’t go as far as to call the film unwatchable, but I also wouldn’t go so far as to call it horror given that several of the deaths happen off camera. In my experience, for a film to be considered a horror film, death scenes are a pretty important component of the genre.
The film had a fairly decent premise in my opinion: a youth ministry is trapped in a vacant Mexican church by a vengeful ghost. The ghost, being a vengeful nun, attempts to claim her victims based on the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins angle was clear to me at first; one couple seemed to embody a lot of lust, especially given that they are part of a youth ministry. As the film goes on, its film appears to move away from this idea, as the group attempts to determine the ghost’s motivation in an effort to escape. Personally, I think this would have worked better if the film employed the red herring technique and had the killings be the result of human action rather than supernatural acts. The building blocks for such a plot twist were there, and for me, this would have been a more compelling approach to the movie.
The film is reportedly produced by a studio known for “mockbusters” that capitalizes on popular titles. And given the lack of fear factor, it makes me wonder if the film was intended to be a “mockbuster” of The Nun film franchise. I wouldn’t be surprised by this, but I wouldn’t exactly say that the film was a parody either. It does feature some quippy characters and a fair amount of snark, particularly in the beginning when the group of young missionaries’ car breaks down. As the group’s ringleader attempts to get a progress report on the status of fixing the car, another character, who is clearly intended to serve as the film’s comic relief, provides plenty of snark. However, much of this is gone by the midpoint of the movie, as focus shifts to the predicament the group finds themselves in. This felt like a loss as well. I imagine the reason for this had to do with attempting to ground the situation in reality. I acknowledge that. Trying to infuse some levity into a serious situation doesn’t always work. However, if there was ever a film that could use some of that, it was this one.
The most familiar person in the film was Noel Gugliemi, who plays a priest who warns the group to leave while they still can. (Why does no one ever heed that warning?) It was difficult to reconcile Gugliemi in this role. While he is a veteran actor with several film and television credits, this was out of the norm for the types of characters that he usually plays. Shame on me for typecasting, but as he is no stranger to playing desperate and intimidating characters, it would have done wonders for the film as a whole if we saw some of that desperation come through in this role. He was too calm, especially given the circumstances. There needed to be anger and fervor. Similarly, the rest of the cast was fairly wooden as well. The best of the lot was April Clark, who had the most central role. At first, it seemed like there was going to be some kind of significant connection between her character and the spirit, especially given that she tended to be the primary target for the spirit. There were breadcrumbs to suggest a deep connection, but they failed to provide a suitable revelation.
In summation, while I had high hopes for this film, it ultimately didn’t live up to them. Part of that is on me for committing the carnal sin of letting myself be fooled by cool cover art. However, in my defense, the building blocks to make a solid horror movie were all there. It just didn’t come together as such.
