Nun—not to be confused with The Nun (1966, 2013, or 2018), and also not to be confused with its own movie poster, which has nothing to do with the film—is not even really a nun movie. In the genres of horror and exploitation, nun movies should be one of two things: either a nunsploitation flick, featuring nuns grappling with their sexuality and having to fend off a typically masculine advisory; or a dark, creepy film that capitalizes on the lore of Catholicism. Nun is neither of these.
I didn’t time it, but out of the movie’s eighty minutes, I would guess only about ten of those minutes is our heroine, Sister Gracie (Julianna Robinson), actually outfitted in her nun’s habit and veil. Actually, I don’t think she ever wore the entire habit; just the veil and bandeau. And the plot doesn’t even revolve around Sister Gracie’s faith or anything to do with Catholicism. Indeed, at one point in the movie when Gracie is nervous about her situation, she begins rattling off elements on the periodic table to, one supposes, ease her mind. A nun would pray! Whose fucking idea was it to have her name elements rather than pray?!
So if it’s not a real nun movie, why is it called Nun and why does the poster suggest something it’s not? Well, the answer is pretty simple, I suspect: the producers wanted to capitalize on the highly anticipated The Nun, which came out several months after this one. (Spoiler, that movie sucked too, but at least it held to the creepy Catholic lore that was required.)
It’s pretty clear that the writers of Nun had an idea about a woman getting trapped in a storage building, potentially with a psychotic killer, then decided to fashion it into a nun movie in hopes of drawing more viewers to a film with a weak, yet also confusing plot. It goes from Sister Gracie struggling through a drinking problem, to her donning a tight-fitting dress in lieu of her habit, to her having to drive, apparently, a couple hundred miles to get a grass killer spray bottle out of a storage facility, to maybe it’s all in her head. The whole thing makes no sense.
It wasn’t all bad. The acting was actually decent for a low budget film featuring a cast I’d never heard of. I could see each of the three main actors with roles in a film with better production value. For about five minutes, the scene in the storage building, which goes on way too long, is actually kind of scary. And we also get a brief shower scene in which we see Sister Gracie’s nice, albeit blurry, ass. Other than that, the movie is largely a waste of time.
PC3’s Horror and Exploitation Movie Scale of Awesomeness!
Gore - 1
Special Effects - 1
Nudity/Sexuality - 4
Wow Factor - 0
Acting - 7
Fear Factor - 3
Story/Plot/Originality - 1
Cinematography/Atmosphere - 3
Sound/Music - 3
Fun Factor - 2
Nun gets a pretty sad 25 on the PHEMSA. It’s no good. But, hey, Petal and I made our way to the end. We found it on ScreamBox, which we only have because we wanted to see Terrifier 2. Nun isn’t about nuns, so if you want to check out some genuine nunsploitation, give Vampire Nuns Behind Bars a read!