The Nun II

Yesterday YaYa and I went to a 9:50pm showing of The Nun II at South Shore. She selected seats in the back row, which is deeply unsettling to my sensibilities. Back row in church, as close as possible to the front for a game, mid-range for movies. That's the accustomed way to chose your seating in a civilized society, but whatever, just more evidence Gen Z is gonna ruin it all in the end.

'Twas a Tuesday, so at least the hot dogs were $2.50 and the soda 20% off. 

The Nun II takes up four years after the events of the first movie. As a string of Catholic clergy are killed/forced into suicide across Europe, the Church suspects the demon Valak has returned and orders Sister Irene (the future Lorraine Warren) to once again investigate.  She tracks it to a boarding school in France, where her old friend Maurice has taken a job as a handyman, and confronts the evil once again. 

I saw The Nun  with Lisa but forgot most of the plot until I reviewed its Wikipedia page before the movie yesterday. I think you can easily follow along without that knowledge, as little of it relies on the past installment besides Taissa Farmiga's portrayal of Sister Irene. They even dispose of a main character from number one off screen, giving him only a curt "He died of cholera" as an obituary -an odd and flippant dismissal of an ally and friend. 

As for scares, I can remember only one moment that made me jump, not that the rest of the film was completely absent of tension and fear. But much like the plot, I simply found the scares too predictable to not see coming. 

I  want to give  praise to the movie - the 8th installment of the Conjuring franchise  - for consistently portraying Catholicism and practitioners in a positive and respectful light. That said, I wouldn't write a new catechism based on what you learn on screen, as a lot of it seems like Catholicism visa-vis good-meaning Protestant writers. An upside down cross is NOT a sign of the devil (it's St. Peter's cross), only an ordained Priest can consecrate the bread and wine, and as I whispered to YaYa when the scene was playing, the Novus Ordo (modern Mass, post Vatican II) was most certainly not what you'd see in a quaint 1956 French parish. 

All in all, I grade this a B, and a C+ if you're going into it just for the frights.