Film Review: The Nun II suffers from the law of diminishing returns

"...the usual tactics of jump scares, creaking doors and ominously flickering lights are given a gothic makeover by dint of its Catholic milieu – but even so there’s scarcely an original idea to be found in the entirety of its 110 minutes..."

Anna Popplewell and Katelyn Rose Downey in The Nun II

• The Nun II 
• ★★☆☆☆
• Cinema review

The Nun II (16s) stars Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene, who defeated the ‘demon nun’ Valak (Bonnie Aarons) in The Nun (2018) but failed to eliminate her unholy foe entirely.

Opening in France in 1956, this sequel centres on a former monastery that has been converted to a girls’ boarding school, where the kindly caretaker, Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), has recently taken up employment. 

Unfortunately, we quickly learn that the shape-shifting Valak has taken up residence in Maurice, and is using his body as a vessel while she searches for a holy relic that will give her power to wreak evil beyond all imagining. 

The ninth offering from the Conjuring ‘universe’, The Nun II suffers from the law of diminishing returns: the usual tactics of jump scares, creaking doors and ominously flickering lights are given a gothic makeover by dint of its Catholic milieu – old monasteries, ruined chapels, lurid tales of martyrdom – but even so there’s scarcely an original idea to be found in the entirety of its 110 minutes. 

Young Katelyn Rose Downey shines as an imperilled schoolgirl, and Taissa Farmiga is strong in the central role, but otherwise, The Nun II is a dispiritingly predictable horror that is about as frightening as a mild headache. For Conjuring completists only.