At one point in The Nun II, the demon known as Valak is terrorizing Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga).  While doing that, Valak is also possessing another character in another town that, according to the movie, is an hour’s car ride away.  For reasons left unexplained, Valak has grown more powerful since the last installment.  Of course, Valak was very powerful before.  For example, at one point Valak transported a priest into a coffin buried underground.  In this sequel, Valak has the power to warp space-time in two places simultaneously.  That display of power is very impressive.  And yet, no matter how hard Valak tries, I knew that Valak would lose again to a nun who might be ninety pounds soaking wet.

When I realized this, I almost felt sorry for Valak.  Yes, Valak is a demon who killed a lot of nuns in the first movie–and a similar number of priests and nuns in the lead-up to this movie.  Valak is clearly not intended to be a sympathetic character.  However, I can’t help but feel that Valak’s efforts should be rewarded.  All of those awesome displays of power shouldn’t be for naught.  At least Valak gets to have some fun before he goes down in defeat.  In the opening scene of The Nun II, Valak levitates a priest and sets him on fire in front of an altar boy.  Say what you will about Valak, but you have to admire Valak’s showmanship.

As you may recall from The Nun, Irene, Father Burke and Maurice (aka “Frenchie”) confronted Valak in a monastery in Romania.  Irene and Burke thought they had defeated Valak and sealed him up for eternity, only for Valak to possess Maurice without them noticing.  Since that encounter, Maruice has been working as a handyman in churches across Europe.  At each stop, a member of the church is killed in outrageous fashion before Maurice hits the road.  Incredibly, after a dozen such incidents, prospective employers have failed to put two and two together and Maurice has been able to find work at every stop.  His latest gig is at boarding school in France where he has been timidly wooing teacher Kate (Anna Popplewell) and befriending her sweet daughter Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey).  The three would make a nice family, but Valak didn’t guide Maurice to the school so that he could settle down.

The church is obviously concerned about all of the deaths at its places of worship and has sent a Bishop to recruit Irene back into the fray.  She lives in a peaceful, sun-dappled convent and really doesn’t want anything to do with demons anymore, but the Bishop convinces her that it’s her duty.  Even though Father Burke has died of cholera and is no longer available, the Bishop is confident that Irene can handle things by herself.  At that moment, Irene probably wished the Bishop didn’t think so highly of her.  Thankfully, Irene’s fellow nun Debra (Storm Reid) decides to tag along on her trip to the dark side.  Debra isn’t thrilled with her family sticking her in a convent and decides that investigating a demon who flambé’s members of the church is the better career path.  (There really should be a patron saint of incredulity.)

Irene and Debra take the next train to Palais des Papes, France, where they hope to find answers at the church library.  Meanwhile, Sophie has been seeing Valak when she’s alone.  She’s also noticed Maurice acting strangely, as if he were…possessed?  Fortunately for Kate, Sophie and the rest of the schoolgirls, Irene and Debra are on their way to stop Valak from obtaining a sacred relic that gives incredible powers to whoever wields it.  Given how powerful Valak already is, I wondered why he needs to be even more powerful.  That reminds me, I couldn’t tell you what Valak’s evil plan is, or why Valak needs this relic to accomplish it, other than to become the meanest, baddest demon around.  I wish these movies would let Valak communicate with more than hisses and growls.)

Compared to its intimate and claustrophobic predecessor, The Nun II is significantly larger in scope.  Instead of focusing on three characters in one creepy setting, The Nun II spans multiple locations, introduces several new characters and has (gasp!) two demons.  These additions are interesting to varying degrees, but they don’t make the story scarier, only busier.  If there is such a thing as subtraction by addition, The Nun II is a prime example.  The new characters are likable enough, but they are thinly drawn and serve little purpose other than to act frightened and scream.  (For example, the sole defining trait of Sophie is that she makes bracelets.)  The new settings are drab and frequently shot in near-darkness.  Scenes unfold at a slow, listless pace.  When the movie finally arrives at the expected confrontation between the forces of good and evil, the battle is split between two camps, making the action needlessly complex and ridiculously bombastic.  (Given how powerful Valak is in this movie, I didn’t understand why he needed to tag-team with anyone.)

While The Nun II is fortunate in being able to bring back Farmiga as Sister Irene and Jonas Bloquet as Maurice, it keeps them apart until the last act.  Until then, the movie fashions a would-be romance between Maurice and Kate.  Bloquet and Popplewell are handsome actors and have chemistry, but their timid romance doesn’t hold a candle to the forbidden passion aspect that gave electricity to Irene and Maurice’s interactions in The Nun.  While Maurice is causing minor havoc at the boarding school, the movie pairs Irene with the rebellious Sister Debra as Nun Detectives.  This amazingly is the second horror sequel I’ve seen this year that has an African-American actress play sidekick to a slightly bland White lead (Insidious: The Red Door being the other).  Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t allow any time to explore Irene and Debra’s friendship beyond polite conversation.  By the time Irene and Maurice are reunited, the movie immediately proceeds with the expected holy fireworks.

You may recall that the events in The Nun hinged on a sacred relic containing the blood of Christ.  This movie features yet another sacred relic that could help either side defeat the other.  I’ll dive into said relic in my analysis below, but I find it odd how this series is somehow resembling the Indiana Jones movies.  If the inevitable sequel contains another sacred relic in the plot, I’ll be expecting Irene to don a Fedora and beat back Valak with a bullwhip.

The issues I had with The Nun II (pacing, visual murkiness, overly busy plot) are the same as those that afflicted director Michael Chaves’ previous outing, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.  Instead of building on the operatic style of The Nun, Chavez instead delivered a movie that looks and feels exactly like his last one.  For most of its run time, The Nun II is a little more than a haunted house movie with creaky floors, creaky doors and things lurking in the shadows.  The Nun succeeded because it was distinct from its sibling franchises (The Conjuring and Annabelle).  Now that this franchise is stylistically the same as the others, its reasons for existing are almost nil.  Farmiga and Bloquet are solid, but the movie that surrounds them is a tired slog.  I’m guessing (hoping?) that Valak will finally meet the Warrens in The Nun III and bring this element of the Conjuring lore to a close.  With that in mind, there is no compelling reason to see this movie.  Not Recommended.

Mysteries of Faith (a.k.a Analysis)

The most curious aspect of The Nun II is the use of The Eyes of Saint Lucy as a macguffin.  The movie explains that whoever wields the relic that contains the eyes will obtain incredible power.  As I mentioned above, Valak is already so powerful that he can torment Irene in one city while possessing Maurice in another.  So I was incredulous that Valak needed even more power to accomplish whatever he is set on accomplishing.  Aside from that, I wondered what exactly was in the relic that everyone was searching for.  I figured that Saint Lucy died hundreds of years before the events in this movie (304 AD to be exact), so I was incredulous that her eyes could have survived intact–or even in any form, after that amount of time.  Human eyes are almost pure liquid, so they would have dried up not long after they were cut from her head, and would be dust twelve-hundred years later.  Sorry for being gruesome, but what the movie is proposing is just silly.

Additionally, The Nun II states that Valak is killing off the descendants of Saint Lucy on his quest for the relic containing her eyes.  The half-dozen or so religious people he kills are roughly the same age, so I wondered how Saint Lucy’s bloodline produced so many heirs between Romania and France, including Irene and her mother.  Even more curious is how Saint Lucy had a bloodline, since she consecrated her virginity to God and presumably was executed as a virgin.

If you’ve seen The Nun II, you know that the Eyes of Saint Lucy ultimately have no bearing on the outcome of the story at all.  They are only a mechanism to bring Irene and Maurice back together.  And when Valak is in possession of the relic, he still cannot defeat two nuns with no extraordinary powers.  Yes, Irene has visions and is now flame retardant, but neither of those abilities actually defeat Valak.  Only when Irene and Debra ingeniously transform red wine into the Blood of Christ are they able to defeat Valak.  

Or did they defeat him?  The Warrens haven’t yet performed an exorcism on Maurice, as foreshadowed at the outset of The Nun.  So, even after Valak is burnt to a crisp for the second time, Maurice is somehow still possessed by him.  Irene’s look at the end of this movie implies that she knows that Maurice’s plight is not over.  Which it isn’t, because of the foreshadowing I mentioned.  The Nun II is all about treading water and milking this franchise for all its worth.  After this disappointing effort, I hope the next entry is the last one.  After starting off with flair, this franchise is heading for a crash.