10 Horror Films That Wasted Their Villain
1. Valak - The Nun
And finally we have Valak, the demonic nun first introduced in jaw-droppingly terrifying fashion in The Conjuring 2.
Mere days after that film's release, Warner Bros. announced that a Valak spin-off, The Nun, was in development.
Despite the clear audience appetite for the character, though, the end result was proof perfect that some monsters are better off as limited engagements.
Like so many other spin-offs, The Nun demystifies Valak by ditching the comparably subtle unease of The Conjuring 2 in favour of more conventional jump scares and an array of increasingly silly supernatural nonsense.
It is very much a textbook example of a villain becoming less interesting and scary the more we see of them and know about their origins.
Nothing in this film gets even remotely close to the iconic painting scene from The Conjuring 2.
Though commercially successful, The Nun reaped the lowest CinemaScore of the entire Conjuring series to date, possibly killing audience interest in the character altogether.
Plans for a sequel are still afoot, however.