The devil went down to Hollywood
Good battles evil again in “The Nun.”
There’s nothing quite as soul-rattling, nightmare-inducing or gut-churning as a healthy dose of unholy terror.
The gold standard for religious horror is, naturally, 1973’s fright-fest classic “The Exorcist,” and new thriller “The Nun” (in theaters Friday) explores similar themes in the battle of good vs. evil while twisting its characters’ belief systems.
What is it about these movies – more so than with, say, vampires, zombies and other sinister ghouls – that gets into our very bones? For one thing, there’s a shorthand going in movies with these sorts of deep religious overtones, says “The Nun” screenwriter Gary Dauberman (“It”).
“You kind of already have faith as a believer that this could really happen, so now the authors of the story can prey on your fear, as opposed to if we were going to do a story about Bigfoot,” Dauberman says. “I don’t know if he really exists or not, (but) the devil is everywhere. There’s no hiding from him, so your soul is always in a bit of jeopardy, no matter where you turn.”
A spinoff of the popular “The Conjuring” movie series, “The Nun” is an origin story for the demonic nun Valak (Bonnie Aarons), introduced as a foil to test the faith of paranormal expert Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in “The Conjuring 2.”
The new film, set in 1952, centers on Father Burke (Demian Bechir) – a priest who’s seen some seriously bad stuff – and young novitiate Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) as they travel to a cloistered abbey in Romania to find out why a young nun has committed suicide and uncover the place’s dark secrets.
It was important for “Nun” director Corin Hardy that his scare tactics hinge on combining classic horror with unholiness.
When something good and pure like a religious sanctuary “is subverted and becomes uneasy and untrustworthy, it becomes terrifying,” he says, like the unnerving sight of an upside-down crucifix – a “Nun” signature.
In that vein, “The Exorcist” has been freaking out generations of filmgoers since the 1970s, with its visceral, disturbing scenes involving the possession of a young girl (Linda Blair). However, director William Friedkin famously argues that it’s not really a horror movie.
“To me, (”The Exorcist”) is a film about the mystery of faith,” he told USA TODAY in 2013. “It is profoundly engaging but also disturbing because it’s dealing with the power of Christ, and that is an idea that is not simple to explain or absorb.”
But there’s definite thematic overlap between horror fiction and religion, says Timothy Milinovich, an associate professor of theology at Dominican University, who teaches a class on how they’re connected. Both attempt to address “what is outside of us that is a threat, but also what is within us: rage and anger and jealousy and all these other things that are also corruptions – even the concept of guilt (and) the need for redemption.”
In that sense, hope is as key for narratives like “The Nun” as the creep factor. “In these dark times, you have to rely on the one thing that brought you to religion in the first place, which is really faith. That’s what (‘The Nun’) speaks to,” Dauberman says.
“Evil will throw things at you and test you, just like we’ve seen so many people tested in the Bible, but at the end of the day, it’s the faith that sort of pulls them through this darkness.”