The Nun II (2023)
The Nun II: Fanfic Without Knowledge | 2/5
Written by Noah Dietz: 4/30/2025
We’ve done it, we’ve reached the end of our journey with The Conjuring films. I hope you had as much fun as I did; ideally you had more. When I first saw this was coming out I was confused, since the original film seemed to wrap up into the mainline universe rather cleanly. What’s unfortunate (for The Nun II) is the fact that I’ve been exposed to much better religious horror since I first saw The Nun in 2018. My standards have risen, and I’m more aware of things to care about. Let’s get into it, I suppose.
As The Nun ends with the knowledge that Valak (Bonnie Aarons) escaped destruction, it only seems fitting that this film opens with her immolating a priest in cruciform after a service. In the years after the original film, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) has returned to a simpler life. Though tales of her time in Romania are told, the details of who exactly was involved are shaky at best. She is plucked from her convent along with her friend Sister Debra (Storm Reid) to investigate what seem to be clear signs of Valak burning her way across Europe. While they conduct their hunt, we spend a good deal of time in a boarding school in France. The former abbey has been converted, and Maurice (Jonas Bloquet) is their new groundskeeper. As Sisters Irene and Debra get closer to learning what The Nun is looking for, it’s revealed that Maurice is not only still possessed by Valak, but seems to also be fully unaware of the situation he is in. Eventually the two groups collide when Irene learns Valak is seeking the saint’s relic, the eyes of St. Lucy.
Before I get into the problems I had with this film, I have to give credit where credit’s due. This feels, generally, more like a real movie than The Nun did by a long shot. It’s better lit, the plot generally makes more sense, and there are more characters who actually breathe some life into the movie. Many of the characters, however, are only relevant to whatever scene they’re directly connected to. Though you might see them briefly later, they truly only exist for a single, contained scene. There is one character who remains strong as ever, and that is the titular nun. As in the previous film, Valak towers over the narrative, a much more interesting force than many other antagonists. Visually distinct and dripping in (exclusively aesthetic) symbolism, she’s the most consistent antagonist of the entire franchise. The scene where she appears from a newsstand, even though fully seen in the trailers, works incredibly well as a tension builder.
Unfortunately they don’t know how any of these points can tie together for a compelling film. There are a large number of individual compelling scenes in this, but few of them connect to a larger narrative in a clean way. Almost all of the issues I have with The Nun II revolve around how it’s weighed down by poor writing coupled with the need to tie the films into a larger narrative. The greater narrative at hand doesn’t have the same kind of care put into it that other large-scale franchises attempt to. While I’m loath to invoke the MCU, by the time we got to the ninth film of that amalgamation it was Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There were a few misses in the early era, of course, but nothing feels like the continued level of misstep that all of the Conjuring films have been giving us. No level of technically competent filmmaking can cover up a slew of frustrating writing choices that are made to service a larger narrative at the cost of the film at hand—late-stage MCU issues that started to kick in for The Conjuring universe before the halfway point.
The most annoying writing flaw these films have, especially down the path of The Nun, is a lack of knowledge. This is all Catholic fanfic without actually knowing anything about Catholicism outside of what the people wear. They know there are saints, they know there are relics, and they know that a lot of the great Catholic films to be made deal with a crisis of faith. When Conclave pushes a question of faith in troubled times, it means something because of the commitment and care that the rest of the film pushes. There’s conscious conversation about the place of the church in the modern era, and the struggles Ralph Fiennes portrays are based around an excess of care and frustration. This clashes heavily with the complaint in this film about the technical specifics of transubstantiation during communion. Even in The Exorcist our crisis of faith lies in a different realm entirely. That isn’t a simple character flaw to attach to anyone you want to make slightly more compelling; there has to be a real reason or it just feels tacked on by some sense of necessity.
From the start I’ve maintained these films are geared toward the teen audience looking for a connected set of films to dive into, and this still falls in line with that thinking. Unfortunately with the way the films never develop into more complex ideas as the franchise trudges onward, fans of the franchise will never develop a greater understanding of themes and film. It frustrates me and it’s a disservice to what horror as a genre is able to offer viewers. The Conjuring universe is absolutely fine to enjoy, but the way it positions itself above popcorn movies will allow people who aren’t willing to grow a justification in stagnation. At the end of nine films I just find myself frustrated more than anything.