CURSE OF THE NUN ** USA 2018 Dir: Aaron Mirtes 80 mins
From the guy that brought us CLOWNTERGEIST right about the time of the release of the new IT movie, it would seem Aaron Mirtes has got his timing down to a fine art again as this time he brings us his nun movie right before the release of the eagerly awaited CONJURING spin off THE NUN. Mirtes’ offering CURSE OF THE NUN (also dubbed NUNTERGEIST) being more jaunty and bizarre then I imagine Corin Hardy’s will ever be.
This follows a young woman, Anna (Lacy Hartselle) and her family as they are about to up sticks and move out of their rather nice, new rental property to start a new life. Unbeknownst to them the ghost of Sister Catherine has been roaming the house the whole time they’ve been there but has decided to reveal herself now as she does not want Anna to leave. Cue a random torrent of torture and supernatural confusion in broad daylight as poor Anna tries to escape her past and this evil spirit with her sanity intact. It’s hard to know where to start with this one really. You’ve got to hand it to them on having the balls to release this just in general, let alone so close to a big budget release of something on the exact same subject. So let’s focus on the positives………erm, let me think….the story tries to be different, with an ok soundtrack and it doesn’t plod along so those attributes just about warranted a star rating of 2 rather than the 1 I was seriously considering giving it. Sister Catherine has been made to look exactly the same as Valak but is about half as scary. There isn’t really much in the way of SFX with very little blood and guts. The corpse paint they use on the Nun and some of the other ghosts looks ok at a distance but when they go in for a close up you can see just how shonky it really is!!! The acting is questionable but bearable though very susceptible to bouts of extreme over acting if someone so much as sustains a bruise. The young handyman that turns up to help attempts some humour which may just about raise the odd snigger but a lot of the time the jokes fall flat. It lacks that sense of impending doom that most others can achieve (if only fleeting) but this one missed it entirely with not even one successful jump scare. That is saying something considering how jumpy I am. I guess it’s because it is all shot in daylight which does make it lose its edge a lot. All that being said it does try to be different by adding gimmicky camera tricks and messing with timelines in a way that makes it a bit more quirky then the bog standard storylines . It’s a weird, wobbly and wholly unconvincing attempt at a scary nun movie that, let’s face it, you won’t bother to watch due to a certain other bigger budget hopefully better movie lurking on the horizon.
Review by Sarah Budd