the nun
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and the otherworldly, and he’s the latest
filmmaker to join the ever-expanding and
increasingly impressive Conjuring franchise.
The Nun is the second spin-off (following
the disappointing Annabelle and its vastly
superior sequel) and gives The Conjuring 2’s
most terrifying creation a prequel story. As it
turned out in James Wan’s Warrens sequel,
the angry spirit possessing poor young Janet
Hodgson in Enfield was in fact simply being
used by the monstrous demon Valak. It’s
amazing to think that the nun creature was
added entirely during reshoots as a way to
ramp up the scares, but it certainly worked.
The Nun also presents a new opportunity
for the franchise. The Conjuring films
themselves are really all about the
relationship between real-life demonologists
Ed and Lorraine Warren, taking stories from
their casebooks, watching them work as a
team and seeing how their love and trust
helps them to overcome the most horrifying
evil forces. Annabelle: Creation was also
a prequel but it understood that the devil
doll works best when it’s terrorising young
children. The Nun, by its very nature, opens
up a wonderful avenue for religious horror
that moves away from Amityville style
possession and into full-on Exorcist ter r itor y.
“One of the reasons I was excited to get
involved when I read the script from James
Wan and Gary Dauberman, and this was
their intention as well, was to not want to
repeat what’s come before,” explains Hardy.
“It’s a movie that’s the first in the Conjuring
Universe, taking place in 1952. You have
a priest hired by the Vatican and paired
up with a novitiate nun who’s an innocent
character, hasn’t taken her vows, and they’re
sent across to the mountains of Romania to
investigate an abbey where a nun has been
found by a French Canadian delivery man,
who takes them through the forest to the
abbey, and they arrive to determine whether
the grounds are still holy or not. So, it was
a different kind of story in some ways, and
as a fan of horror but also what James Wan
had created in his many franchises and
particularly in the Conjuring one, it was
refreshing to read a script that wasn’t trying
to repeat itself.”
One thing that’s very clear from watching
The Hallow is that Hardy is a director
with a very keen sense of atmosphere and
visuals. In other words, a filmmaker whose
personality translates in the final cut. With
that being the case, you could understand a
certain level of anxiety about committing to
a film that’s number five in a franchise, but
he tells us that it was almost immediately
clear that his skillset was exactly what the
producers were looking for.“Sometime early in 2017, I got sent the
script for The Nun and I wasn’t expecting
to make a movie about a demonic nun but
when I read the script I was really excited to
get my teeth into it because it had a world
that I could help create,” he remembers.
“They were a really supportive team. The
guys behind James’ team and New Line,
they’ve done a lot of work in horror and
they’re a great bunch of people, it’s a very
collaborative team with James and Gary
Dauberman and the others. It felt like coming
in as part of the family and everyone getting
excited about trying to create new ideas.
“It’s quite unique actually, just in terms
of a directing standpoint,” he continues. “I
very much strive to make the movies that
I create myself and I have a number that I
work on and develop and in the meantime
I’m open to reading other things. And what’s
great about The Nun is that it’s a character
that’s introduced in The Conjuring 2 briefly
but was something that was very memorable
from that film. So, it’s much more open,
it’s not like directing a sequel to something
where you’re already tied into the rules of
it. It was a nice way of essentially doing an
origin story, like a Conjuring prequel, and
I don’t mean literally having free rein but
it was a chance to help create that from the
start rather than doing a sequel.”there’s
elements of
dracula and
the exorcist,
hammer
movies and
italian
horror...
CORIN HARDY