La monja

This is about a girl whose mother and her mother's schoolmates are tied to the vengeful spirit of a nun. The girl needs to find out what is going on.

A nun is a good vessel for a horror villain. The idea of any type of evil coming through something that is associated with the love of God presents a deception that victimises those who see only the nun and not the evil within. Perfect for horror.

In my opinion some folks are being a bit harsh. Harshness runs rampant among horror fans but I get it. If you are a horror buff like me, you crave something fresh in a genre that give you a lot of the same thing over and over again. It all starts to seem played out and you start to judge films simply by comparing it to the standard of the films you liked best. The problem with that is some folks are of the mindset that if it ain't the best then it is the worst. I try not to do that. I want to rate this by what I got out of it.

Let's talk about what I liked. The best thing about this is the nun. While we don't see her with a lot of screen time, she was a neat villain. I don't want to give spoilers but I liked how she formed, moved and attacked.

Let's talk about why others are hating on it. The story is weak. This is also seen a lot in horror. If you want the viewers to be impressed you have to give them something worth investing into. Don't be so vague. Give us a story with depth. The acting could've been better.

I have seen worse films and this was ok. Not perfect but I could look past problems and still enjoy the film. If you aren't a horror snob, this really isn't all that bad and you can find some enjoyment in it.

Wow are you guys tough on this film. Granted it was "I know What You Did Last Summer" with a Nun. But the Nun was pretty scary and the film maintained a disturbingly eerie feel. There is something about the European sensibility that gives this kind of film a moody realism. It was a little odd that everyone had Spanish accents I thought the acting was pretty natural. The special water effects were pure trailer material. However, I felt let down by the end of the movie. It seemed rushed. And I'm sure it wasn't. This was also the work of a first time director. I thought he did a great job.

That said, I have seen far worse films.

I'm also dieing to see Yuzna's "What Lies Beneath". I enjoyed to book and was sorry to see his film isn't available on DVD.

I don't usually like to comment on the acting in a movie, because it is the one thing that people who have agenda against a film will go after. In this movie, I will make an exception. The acting in this film are below average all around. I mean halfway into the film, I wonder how the hell did the producer and/or the director gets around casting such an ensemble of people who can't act. Even-though the production value was good, the ill written story just compounded on top of the bad performance of the actors, and there is even a half-hearted attempts to a twist to the ending of the movie, which ends up quite confusing. Is all the Spanish horror films this disappointing?

Directed by Luis de la Madrid and produced by Brian Yuzna's Spanish label Fantastic Factory, The Nun is a modestly budgeted, reasonably effective horror that starts off like a supernatural I Know What You Did Last Summer (the '97 slasher is even referenced in this movie), but ends with a neat psychological twist. It's by no means perfect, suffering from some iffy CGI effects and a few dodgy performances from its largely European cast, but it does deliver in terms of creepy atmosphere, and benefits from a couple of fun, gory death scenes.

The story, by Jaume Balagueró (The Darkness), sees a young woman, Eve (Anita Briem), travelling to Spain with her friends Julia (Belén Blanco) and Joel (Alistair Freeland) after she witnesses her mother being murdered by a ghostly nun. In Barcelona, Eve searches for clues to help her understand what happened, her investigation leading to the now closed Catholic boarding school attended by her mother 18 years earlier. As she delves deeper into the mystery, Eve begins to suspect that her mother was killed by the vengeful spirit of Sister Ursula, a strict nun at the school who disappeared shortly before its closure.

With the ghostly nun only appearing in water, there is quite a lot of not-quite-convincing digital trickery involved, but the nun herself is suitably scary looking, and kills off her victims in some satisfyingly inventive ways, the best being a fatal elevator ride (the lift severing the victim's arms) and a decapitation by falling sheet of glass. Other less memorable deaths include a slashed throat, an impalement on a broken pipe, and the crucifixion of a woman with big hooters and a gimpy leg (the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away).

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

So you know when you're TOTALLY into a movie because the trailer was really good and the movie actually seems to be living up to what the trailer promised...and you're freaked out because it's genuinely creepy and impressed because it's kind of a way cooler movie than you'd expect to see in a direct to DVD movie these days and so you just can't wait for the climax because you need that pay-off... and then the thing goes limp in the last 10 minutes and there's no climax or rendering of where entire the story just went wrong...so you're totally let down and kinda peeved off...? That's what THE NUN did for me last night....

Everything Brian Yuzna (producer) touches lately seems to just end...not conclude...it just stops with some illogical reason for all the cool shite that just took up 90 minutes of your life....

Cool Fx. Decent acting. Moody. Scary at times. Sexy. Then it sucks at the end.