Spangled Watery Mess: The Nun (2005)

The Nun (La Monja) (Spain, 2005)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Anita Briem, Belén Blanco, Manu Fullola

In this English-language Spanish fright flick, we go through a supernatural revenge plot as a vengeful ghost nun kills off women who are somehow connected to her demise. By somehow I mean they killed her. Ain't a surprise. Ain't a spoiler. I've seen it miles away. I must be watching too many of these...

Eighteen years ago, a group of six preteens are terrorized at an all-girls Catholic School by a uber-strict nun whose means of punishment include making a girl eat paper or have them washing their groin with a shower head.

Something happens some time later-*coughMURDER*cough- so we move to the present with young Eve, the daughter of one of these formerly tortured girls, witnessing her mother get murdered by a levitating semi-aquatic nun; cops didn't make much from it and label the death a suicide, but after one of her mother's friends also gets killed in an "accident' involving an elevator, she decides to join her friends' visit to Spain and try to find a likely explanation to why this is happening.

Seems like a fair plot and I'm happy to say majority of The Nun (2005) plays a cool and interesting supernatural slasher, a molding of House on Sorority Row (1982) meets Darkness Falls (2003). The film makes up for its lack of workable characters and feasible acting with some strong gore effects (both CG and practical), worthwhile suspense scenes with the killer ghost and, not to mention, some beautiful camera work, though these nitpicky flaws aren't really that bad compared to the movie's biggest mess-up; a severe care of plot twisting so bad, it kinda ruins everything that it was building to.

You see- spoiler alert- there was no killer nun.  It's all Eve. Or at least they try to make it look that way.

Problem with this was that it just doesn't add up for a number of reasons; given she could've cut her own mother's throat or crucified one of the victims, how exactly could she have pulled off an elaborate elevator kill? Or a murder involving a glass pane? The film even tries explaining the killing spree as a traumatic response with her Eve's mum being her first victim which I'm open to accept if not for one dumb, little loophole: her mum's the second effin' victim. Another victim in London was killed days before said trauma was triggered so if she's responsible for it all, how the fuck did she even got all the way from Europe then back at America in just a few days? My likeliest explanation for it all was possession, Eve's is the killer nun's host or something, but these writers are trying so hard to make their twist legit, they even included flashbacks to back it up. I dunno, I try not to over-think this. It insults my intelligence.

Watching this movie cis like watching I know What You Did Last Summer (1997), only with a wet nun instead of a wet fisherman, a dumb try-hard twist coming out of nowhere in an attempt to top High Tension (2003)'s, and oddly long for a slasher film. (101 Minutes. Ten minutes of that came from our cast explaining a lot of things we figured out on our own already) And yet, I'm giving it a pass for at least a fun first 90 minutes. Now, please excuse me, I'm gonna watch some cartoons to mend and relax my brain...

Bodycount:
1 female had her throat cut with a kitchen knife
1 female mentioned dead, burned
1 female had her arms crushed off on an elevator, bled to death
1 female found crucified
1 female drowned in a bathtub (flashback)
1 female decapitated by a broken window pane
1 male hurled to a wall, killed
1 female burned inside an oven
1 female impaled through with a harpoon
Total: 9