Review

An evil revenant, who just so happens to be a nun, is out to "punish" the girls who killed her at a convent school for the naughty eighteen or so years ago. Before you can drop in a "naughty convent girl" joke, the daughter of one of the catholic bad gals is tracking down the nun, the reason for the nun having a wet habit, and gosh, trying to save those who haven't come under the waterlogged ghost's evil eye yet. All roads lead to Spain and the convent school of the damned.

Nuns with guns have nothing on this spectre of catholic piety and revenge!

The Nun is one of those movies that almost pulls off the chill factor while being a horror fun ride to boot. "Almost" is the operative word here. Some fine tuning, decent actors, and heck, another edit or two of the script and we might have had another continental classic on our hands rather than just another so-so horror flick I'm going to forget about by next week.

There's some fine stuff going down in The Nun, chief of which would be our watery harpy with the bad habit. Come on, who doesn't dig the concept of a killer nun made out of water, probably "nun" of you. Sorry, the bad jokes are going to roll throughout this review, a sure sign that I thought the movie sucked. We get some awesome nun attacks that had me salivating like a dog eyeing the Sunday roast, no reference to the hell spawn of our Nic intended here. The nun crashes through windows, rushes through people leaving them wet, and pops out of bathtubs like a bat out of hell. Director de la Madrid ices this stuff, but then drops the ball with the line open. There's simply too much white space between nun attacks and it might have been just my jaded cinema radar but I thought in places there was way too much "nun behind people", with the anticipated attack losing the chill factor as I wondered just how long de la Madrid could drag out a scene. Dude, up the victim count and get this puppy on a leash and walking I don't have all day over here. The Director took things way too seriously, we're talking about a film that at one stage shows a waterlogged nun sitting on an aeroplane's wing at cruising altitude and didn't seem to get that these sort of flicks should be double dipped in cheese. Dude, watery nun, add the stoners, a few punch lines, and some boobs would be my call. How on earth you could take the premise behind the script here seriously goes way over my head.

Director de la Madrid spends about half his movie staging elaborate death scenes of The Omen variety. that movie sure has some sins to atone for, and then in the second half of the flick throws the audience to the Spanish Inquisition. We're talking torture over and beyond what's allow under various Geneva conventions here as our motley Scooby crew arrive at the convent that dripped watery blood. An elaborate back-story gets layered on, no one's interested, we get more expositional rants than your typical Oscar winning melodrama, and every character seems to have read "An Idiot's Guide to Revenants". What we donâ't get is people trying to get out of Dodge when the water hits the fan, or anyone acting in any remotely believable fashion. One chick, who knows her fate is tied in to dying in an oven, keeps going back to the kitchen for fracks sake! The big twists coming at you are who exactly is Eva's father, did anyone remotely give a toss? - and the whole nun explanation thing. I repeat, did anyone remotely give a toss? The resolution when it does mercifully finally arrive is straight out of the horror archive of bogus and standard movie developments.

Is it too much to ask for, a Nunploitation movie that actually tries to get the chill factor happening?

There are more plot holes in this flick than you can poke a bishop at. Why exactly was the nun possessed from the get-go? And the whole movie dissolves into watery sludge before you can say "maybe they'll refund our money on this one". Added poo filling to this cinematic sandwich of distaste was the character of Joel, who was not only annoying but also had a camcorder for no apparent reason. Yes, the Director cuts to freaking camcorder film, and yes something Joel shoots will come back to bite us in the arse as one of the second half expositions gathers steam. Word of warning kids, no matter who the person is manning the camcorder in a horror flick, you can be assured they will be an annoying arsehole. Hey, it's the new millennium and we already have a new horror stereotype in place.

To sum up, the visuals are actually pretty good, the movie is way too serious for its subject matter, the second half sucks donkey balls, and if you are after some saving boobs then you'll be getting "nun".

Writer Manu Diez gets exactly one thing right, Catholic scholars would have picked up on this one, but then simply has to exposition it through the fracking roof. Each of the original bad convent girls, can't think of a punch line there, has the name of a saint, and to the well trained, their fate resolves to be that of their patron saint. Pretty nifty idea really, wished Diez had figured out how to shoehorn that in before we saw the majority of the cast meeting their watery doom.

On the acting front, well everything is pretty stilted and awful if I have to be honest. Anita Briem (Eva) is the pick of the bunch, and will probably be a knockout in a more developed role. Alistair Freeland (Joel) had some atrocious lines to deliver, had a character that kept changing outlook as the script required, and who had a fracking camcorder glued to his hand throughout, so I wasn't appreciating his thespian qualities. Belen Blanco (Julia) couldn't do anything with an annoying pretty much cardboard cut out European character. And Manu Fullola (Gabriel) laboured through some atrocious scriptwriting and a plot turn that had me banging my head on my coffee table. Frack, that was one of the most stupid movie developments I've ever seen.

In terms of gore, de la Madrid has his Omen mojo on. We get arms being chopped off by an elevator, a pretty decent beheading, an impaling on a rusted pipe, and lots of blood. I appreciated the effort the Director had gone to in the elaborating staging of his murder scenes, but couldn't help wondering how many times he had checked out the adventures of Damien.

The score in this flick is actually pretty chilly and the additional sound bites were simply way too good for the movie. I was digging the soundtrack and wondering if it shouldn't get recycled by a future film.

Director de La Madrid threw on a lot of awesome visuals, excellent use of slow motion, and an atmosphere that simply screamed out revenant nun on the loose; he unfortunately got lumbered with a script that I wouldn't use to line my cat's poo tray. The makers of The Nun simply forgot they were making an amusing horror film, it's about a killer nun made out of water for starters, and went way too serious with this original sin. I'm calling twelve "Hail Marys" and a bakers dozen of "Our Fathers" as penance.

If you really must check out the watery antics of Sister Ursula, cause you have a thing for nuns or whatever, then I would certainly wait until The Nun hits the bargain bin down your local rental outlet, which should be any day now. The movie commits mucho cinematic sins, crucifies you with the second half, and will have you saying your rosary in an attempt to try and forget some of the half arsed plot developments. I think I may have discovered purgatory here, and it isn't pretty.