Flashback: My interviews with the creators of The Nun
Flashback: My interviews with the creators of The Nun
The horror-movie character, who first appeared in 2016's The Conjuring 2, is getting her own sequel — to her own 2018 spin-off — this week.
Seems hard to believe, but the Conjuring universe is ten years old now.
Tonight marks the release of the ninth film within that universe: The Nun II, which is a sequel to a spin-off from another sequel.
I have no idea when I’ll get around to seeing the new film—I’m not the biggest horror buff, and I’m less inclined to make a point of seeing sequels and spin-offs in the theatre than I used to be—but several years ago I happened to be on the junkets for the first two films that featured the title character, so I figured I’d mark the release of the new film by linking to my coverage of the earlier films.
The character—a demon named Valak who sometimes takes the form of a creepy nun played by Bonnie Aarons—first appeared in 2016’s The Conjuring 2.
Originally, Valak was going to be a much more conventional sort of demonic figure—with a horned, toothy, animatronic head sitting atop an actor in an animalistic body suit—but as director James Wan noted on Instagram last year, he ended up feeling that Valak needed to be “more grounded, more personal, and creepier.” So he replaced the original version of the demon with a creepy nun during reshoots.
I interviewed Wan in Los Angeles shortly before the film came out—both one-on-one and as part of a group—and, looking back at what I wrote at the time, it appears we didn’t focus on Valak at all, but we did talk about the more positive religious elements in the core Conjuring films, which are based very, very loosely on the case files of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren:
Coming out of Saw, where Jigsaw is getting people for the wrongdoings they did, you guys got labeled for that — there was that term “torture porn” that was used for a while — and then there are these films with Christian/Catholic heroes, so what drew you to these movies?
Wan: You know what’s funny is, when I made Saw, I got accused of being a fascist, when I made Insidious, I got accused of being godless, and now I made the Conjuring films and I’m accused of being too much God. (laughs) So it’s really interesting to see how people have reacted to my three sets of horror films. But listen: for me, at the end of the day, it’s all about telling the stories of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and these two characters are such devout Catholics, and there was no way I could make a movie about them and not touch on the role of religion and faith and all that. It’s such a big part of who they are. It makes up what they do and how they interact with other people. And so that is their badge, that is literally their shield that they use to go do the things that they do, like when they go into whatever dark or evil things that they battle against. They used two things. They used their faith as a crutch to stand on, and the other thing is their love for each other. And I just thought that is such a great dynamic to showcase in a movie, from a cinematic standpoint.
The Conjuring 2 has lots of scary stuff, but it seemed almost like a family-friendly movie in some ways.
Wan: (laughs) Yes, yes.
There’s a scene where Patrick Wilson [the actor who plays Ed Warren] almost swears and stops —
Wan: Yes. But that, again, is my way of trying to draw who the Warrens are. They’re kind of like that kind of people, the “Oh shucks, good golly” type.
Two years after that film came out, Valak got her own movie, a prequel called The Nun—which, like the other Conjuring spin-offs (the Annabelle movies, The Curse of La Llorona), made no pretense of being based on a true story—and this time I got to be part of a group interview with director Corin Hardy and co-stars Taissa Farmiga and Demián Bichir, which took place in a former convent in Mexico City:
The first interviewee to show up is Taissa Farmiga (sister of The Conjuring co-star Vera Farmiga), who plays Sister Irene, a novitiate who has been asked to help investigate a nun’s suicide. Farmiga says it’s “fun” to be doing publicity in this somewhat dilapidated building, instead of a hotel. “Oh my gosh, it’s so c-c-cold,” she says, pretending (?) to shiver, “but also I’m awake and present, and there’s an excitement in the air.” . . .
As it happens, one of the journalists in this room is, herself, a nun, and she asks what kind of “research” the filmmakers did: Did they consult with religious experts, or did they just watch all the old devil movies? . . .
Farmiga — who started working on The Nun mere days after another project — says she would have liked to have more time to research what being a nun is like, but she did what she could to provide the role with some “authenticity”.
“I found personally quite a bit of information in regards to the physicality of being a nun, and how you always have to be watching yourself and trying to improve yourself for the Lord and struggle to be as perfect as you can be,” she says.
“And one of the things I really wanted to incorporate was not the rules but how you watch yourself and how you hold yourself. You walk humbly, you walk close to the walls, close doors quietly, don’t engage in useless conversation, and usually — from my research — that’s for the nuns and novitiates when you’re in the abbey and in the church, but I also wanted to incorporate that when Sister Irene was out in the world, always trying to be the best version of herself that she could be.
“And I found that fascinating, because I realized what dedication and strength and emotional strength that takes to actively acknowledge your flaws as a human being and try to correct yourself and try to be better. And, you know, we’re all humans, we’re all flawed, but it’s difficult to pinpoint that every day and try to progress. So that’s something I really took to heart, just for myself. I wanted to learn to always try to be a little bit better.”
There’s more to both interviews; click on the links above to read them in full.
Also, for what it’s worth: on the junket for The Nun, the studio took us journalists on a “haunted house” tour of the former convent, and they gave us this video of the experience to share with our readers (and yes, I’m briefly visible in a few shots):
So, that about sums up what I’ve written about these films.
I gather Taissa Farmiga is back for The Nun II, and… oh, wait, the new film also stars Anna Popplewell, who played Susan Pevensie in the Narnia movies? Interesting.