Twisted sister
The Conjuring universe heads back in time
SPINNING OUT OF the museum of the supernatural, housed in the basement of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, James Wan’s The Conjuring has quietly spawned a burgeoning shared cinematic horror universe. So far, it includes a numbered sequel, plus a couple of spin-offs for the killer doll Annabelle, collecting an impressive worldwide box office of $1.2 billion. The Crooked Man, as featured in The Conjuring 2 may also be the subject of a future project — but first, here comes The Nun.
We first see the Nun 15 minutes into the original Conjuring — although you’d be forgiven for not noticing the unremarked picture on the wall near the door of the Warrens’ haunted archive. That picture is in the final shot too, reflected in the mirrored lid of the spooky musical box. But it was in The Conjuring 2 she came into her own, when Wan decided late in the day to add some further chills in reshoots. There she was revealed to be an incarnation of the demon Valak, taking a “blasphemous” form that deliberately mocked Lorraine Warren’s (Vera Farmiga) Catholic faith. “James decided he wanted a new monster and she just popped into his head,” says Bonnie Aarons, then as now wearing the twisted wimple (and previously best known as the indelibly terrifying hobo behind Winkie’s Diner in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive). “I wouldn’t even leave the audition until I got the job. No fucking way was anyone going to out-evil me!”
It quickly became obvious this nun had franchise legs. There was, says screenwriter and executive producer Gary Dauberman, an “immediate giddiness” in realising the potential of both character and actress. “There’s something so iconic about her. We knew she had a whole other movie in her.”
That movie has turned out to be an origin story, taking place in and around a Romanian convent in the 1950s: revealing the Nun guise pre-dates Valak’s encounters with Warren by some years. Following strange occurrences at the abbey and the suicide of a young novitiate, the Vatican sends seasoned exorcist Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and his novice assistant Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, sister of Vera, just to keep it in the family) to investigate whether the site is still holy. Naturally,
it’s anything but.
“The period and the setting and the scope of it hark back to really classic, old-school, scarlet-blooded horror films,” reflects director Corin Hardy, making the step up to the studio big-time following his Empire Award-winning Irish-indie The Hallow. “And I loved that the story was a character-driven mystery as well as a scary horror movie,” he says. “There’s a lot of history-within-the-history as what’s happening unfolds. If it had been set in 2017 in Los Angeles and was about a couple getting spooked by The Nun, I might have been less interested, but this was just what I was looking for.” Or so he thinks. Maybe, just maybe, Valak was looking for Corin. THE NUN IS IN CINEMAS FROM 7 SEPTEMBER