The sisters' magazine: The business world fails shockingly

Taissa Farmiga en The nun. Wraner Bros.

Rich in atmosphere but devoid of new ideas on how to scare an audience, The nun it's like being stuck in a club with a cool decor where the DJ continues to play the same song over and over again.

The camera turns left, away from a character, then goes back and there is something terrifying behind them. And even. Something is going through a window in the distance. And even. It's very quiet in the misty, light-stained forest, then … and again.

Then there are the hands. Get out of the darkness and sometimes through the doors or the cold land itself, The nun tries to bring out a lot of terror from the jaded hands that grab, hit and feel his protagonists. After a while, it's less like watching a horror movie than attending a summer music festival filled with drunken boys.

Is any of these various jump alerts already registered? Not really. For this to happen, the film would have to create tension and suspense, which I suppose is not necessary. Why bother with all this work?

After all, The nun already wears the imprimatur of "Conspiracy Universe ", which is a fan-approved marketing speech that denotes its connection to the clock of the movies that preceded it – the Conspiracy, 2014 Annabelle, 2016 The Conjuring 2, and 2017 Annabelle: CreationAll were better than that. Being part of this popular genre film series may have started as a kind of horrible quality stamp of the USDA, but if The nun is an indication – it now means that filmmakers do not have to rack their brains to think of something new to scare us or surprise us.

As much as Annabelle did with the first Conjuring, this film provides the background of the antagonist of Conjuration 2. The story takes place in 1952 in Romania, where The nun was also shot. The Vatican commissioned a graying priest (Mexican actor Demián Bichir) and a novitiate (Taissa Farmiga, making white clothes of Clarice Starling) to investigate the apparent suicide of a nun in a bombed mountain abbey after the war . After being escorted to the scary place by a local randy named Frenchie (SheJonas Bloquet), they discover that not only is the abbey parked on a portal in hell, it is inhabited by a demon (Bonnie Aarons, resuming her role as The Conjuring 2 and Annabelle: Creation) who prefers to wear a habit to easily melt

There is a satisfactory robustness to the appearance of the film, with an intelligent use of light and rich shadows of detail that require you to look deeply. It's as if you've paid a little extra for the deluxe version of the horror ride, filled with thick double-thick casting fog behind the scenes, like Cool Whip in Jell-O Salad.

Unfortunately, the decor is dressed without any place to go. The plot is as little involved as slow. The talented cast is the game. Farmiga, the sister of the star of the series, Vera, has the kind of big eyes that seem in a constant state of devotional marvel. But all face an awkward dialogue that seems infinitely less considered than atmospheres. Beyond the character of the title, the connection of the film to the global series is activated and simplified.

There are so many promises here that are unexploited for the least satisfying reason we can imagine: the people who made the film did not need it because the film would still make money. Unfortunately, this can be the scariest thing that The nun left for that.