Superior scares
THE NUN I The Hallow director Corin Hardy conjures up a classical chiller…
This is a slightly different direction for the Conjuring universe,” says director Corin Hardy, the lifelong horror nut who’s making his sophomore feature with The Nun after ace monster movie The Hallow. “It’s not what I’d call a straight-up haunted house/ possession movie. It has a little bit more mystery-adventure [about] it.”
After James Wan’s The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, plus devil-doll spin-offs Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation, The Nun is the fifth entry in a series that already has three more movies – The Conjuring 3, The Crooked Man and a third Annabelle movie – pipelined. As the title suggests, Hardy’s film focuses on the unholy lady (Bonnie Aarons) who made one hell of an impact in Wan’s Conjuring sequel, and sets its action in a Romanian castle in 1952 to learn just how our naughty nun got possessed by the demon Valak.
“You’ll come to know more about Valak and how this presence has entered the Conjuring universe,” teases Hardy, promising it will be an eerie journey. “In a movie like this, which is set in convents with gaslight and candles, it’s not hard to create an unnerving atmosphere. You’ll be hoping for the jump scares just to give you release!”
The plot is currently cloaked in mystery as thick as the fog that shrouds the castle glimpsed in the trailer, but we do know that an exorcist, Father Burke (Demián Bichir), is hired by the Vatican when the body of a nun is found at an abbey. Joined by novitiate nun Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, sibling of The Conjuring’s Vera), Father Burke “has to determine if the building is still holy”. We’re guessing not. It only takes one glance at the Demon Nun’s pale, pointed face to realise that what is living behind her eyes, to steal from Halloween’s Dr. Loomis, is purely and simply evil.
Hardy laughs. “Bonnie embodied the character in The Conjuring 2 in the same way that Robert Englund embodied Freddy Krueger,” he says. “Also, one of the few times in my life that I practically had a heart attack from sheer terror was in Mulholland Drive, when Bonnie comes out from behind the diner. Anyone who can do that in a brief moment is worth everything. So it was great having her get more stuck into the character.” You might say that Aarons is in the habit of scaring the bejesus out of viewers. And Hardy is confident that she now has the perfect vehicle for her talents. “We had a real-life Romanian priest come and bless the castle before we started filming,” he grins. “The priest threw holy water and it hit me in the eye. Make of that what you will…”
ETA | 7 SEPTEMBER / THE NUN OPENS THIS AUTUMN.