The Nun

1.5/4

Starring: Anita Briem, Belen Blanco, Manu Fullola, Alistair Freeland, Cristina Piaget

Rated R for Horror Violence and Language

And the moral of the story is...semi-cool special effects do not make a good movie.  Although the special effects of Nunzilla (who's all wet...haha) are cool, they quickly lose their luster.  Unfortunately, all that's left are plastic characters, mediocre acting and a pathetically thin story.

Eighteen years ago, a group of girls were terrorized by a fanatic nun at a boarding school.  All the sudden, Sister Ursula (Piaget) disappeared.  Now, these girls are being murdered by an apparition of the nun that is made of water.  After her mother is murdered by Sister Ursula, Eve (Briem) heads to Spain with her friends Julia (Blanco) and Joel (Freeland) to unravel the mystery.

Horror movies never have complex plots.  They rely on atmosphere and tension to bring in audiences.  That being said, "The Nun" is nothing more than a premise that takes an hour and a half to pitch.  The "twists" are predictable and make no sense upon cursory reflection.

The acting is...okay?  Honestly, no one is either good or bad enough to leave much of an impression.  Anita Briem is hot, but she doesn't do much in the way of acting.  Belen Blanco is likable, but her thick Argentinian accent makes a lot of her dialogue hard to understand.  Ditto for the hunky Manu Fullola, who plays the seminary student Gabriel.

I'll admit that some of the special effects are cool.  The way director Luis de la Madrid sets up the entrances for Sister Ursula is kind of like what they did in "The Final Destination;" hint at something ominous, then back off.  de la Madrid also has an eye for atmosphere.  What he doesn't have is a decent script (it took me half the movie to figure out who was who or how they related to each other). or a sense of pacing.  This is a thin story that quickly grows boring.

It's a good thing that this movie was direct-to-DVD, otherwise the Catholic League would have pitched a fit.  It would be hard to blame them since this movie is so awful, but that would have given the movie free publicity, which means that more unfortunate souls would be subjected to this crappy horror movie.

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