The Nun Review: 2 Ups & 7 Downs
6. Valak's Barely In It
The main attraction of this movie is, of course, the demon nun Valak, who proved so intensely terrifying in The Conjuring 2.
Perhaps appreciating that the antagonist's terror would be diluted if featured extensively over a single movie, Hardy actually keeps Valak in the shadows for the most part until the third act.
Despite the movie being called The Nun, Valak mostly pulls the strings from behind the scenes, and if you're hoping for a 95-minute thrill-ride of a demon nun terrorising people, you're probably going to leave the cinema disappointed.
We only see the demon nun visage from The Conjuring 2 for a few scattered minutes throughout the film, which sucks.
Also, the attempt to explain Valak's backstory commits a cardinal sin of horror lore: over-explaining a supernatural entity's origins to the point that ie demystifies them and makes them less scary. More than anything, Valak's origins on Earth are just howlingly generic and unoriginal.