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Film: A Nun’s Curse
Year: 2019
Director: Tommy Faircloth
Writer: Tommy Faircloth
Starring: Felissa Rose, Damian Maffei and Gunner Willis
Review:
This was another film that I didn’t really know anything about coming in. A guy I know told me that he had seen some of the director’s earlier work and was wondering if this film would be similar to that. To open this, the director was in attendance and did a bit of a Q & A afterwards as well. This was also the world premiere for it as well. The synopsis is a group of travelers are forced to seek shelter inside an abandoned jail where a notorious nun named Sister Monday (Felissa Rose) had once been assigned. She was also suspected of murdering prisoners.
We start this with a little girl in her room. She has a bunch of dolls and we see her walk across the room to the closet door. She opens it and it goes black. We then jump into the present, where the little girl is Ashley-Kae (Erika Edwards). She is taking pictures of a burned out church. With her is her sister, Gabby (Kristi Ray) and her boyfriend Anthony (Damina Maffei) as well as Ashley’s friend from class Michael (Gunner Willis). Gabby and Anthony are annoyed because they want to go the sister’s vacation house, but Gabby’s parents made them stop along their route for Ashley to take pictures.
They go to the burned out church where we learn that Ashley’s father used to tell her scary stories about a nun before bedtime, Sister Monday. This has influenced her to research more into it and even make her thesis around it. She tells the group the story and it spooks them, even more that this church is where she was living until it burned down. She was then transferred to a local prison after that. Ashley really wants to go, but no one else does.
A thunderstorm rolls in and that’s when Anthony cannot find the car keys. They’re forced to go to the prison. Taking advantage of this, Ashley decides to look around. She ends up with psychic visions of the past to see what Sister Monday was doing to the inmates. The scary thing is that, the group sees someone moving around the prison, dressed in a habit. Sister Monday disappeared and was never found. Is she still roaming the halls of this abandoned prison or is it something else?
This film is quite interesting as the writer/director, Tommy Faircloth, revealed that originally the killer was going to be the warden, but the location they ended up using had this great stain-glass window. It was then shifted to being a nun and Rose wanted to take on the role. After seeing the film, I think that is a much better decision. If you know anything about me, I’m a big fan of the corruption of religion so having a killer nun is a great idea.
I won’t harp on this movie too much as it didn’t have the biggest budget. We have a distinct group of characters and there’ some actually good reveals throughout here. I’m not going to lie, I’m not the biggest fan of the flashbacks, as it just kind of seems a bit lazy. I’ll also admit that the ending was something that I actually hate in movies. The only props I will give it is that it does change the course of events that happen in the film though.
I’ll move next to the pacing, which I did have some slight issues with. I think that we have a good set up here. It doesn’t take long to get to know the characters, set the stage to the great setting that we have and to get into what’s going to happen. The problem is that I don’t feel the characters are in peril until like the last 30 minutes. We do get some deaths that are shown through flashbacks, but I think it would have helped to drive tension if we spaced them out for me. After seeing the reveal of what’s happening, it makes sense and I actually like that part of it. As I said, the ending didn’t really work for me either.
To move into the acting, I thought it was pretty decent if I’m honest. Rose is great as the creepy nun here. I love that she’s so invigorated to be back into acting so even films that are bit lower budget, she puts in a solid performance. Maffei is such a jerk and pretty hilarious if I’m honest. Willis is interesting as the complete opposite of him, but also bringing humor. I really liked Edwards as the lead here, she plays the role a bit subdued and it really works for me. Ray is such a bitch, but I think that’s good for a film like this.
That takes me to the effects, which I was glad to see that since this is a type of slasher that they went practical. The blood that we get looks real and I love the weapon that Sister Monday uses. It is a wooden cross that has a knife hidden inside of it. I dug that and they really do hide some of it which also works unless you can make the effects look really good. There’s a bit of CGI, especially the last image which was fine. I like the look of the contacts that Sister Monday uses as well. The film is shot fine in my opinion also.
Now with that said, this film I was actually pleasantly surprised with. It has an interesting idea that ticks some of my boxes, with just some slight flaws. I think that they could have paced out some of the deaths, but the idea of a nun killing people I can get down with. I didn’t really care for the ending though if I’m going to be perfectly honest, as it felt like a cop out. The acting I will say was pretty solid for a movie like this and we have your normal troupe characters. The blood effects were solid and even the CGI I didn’t necessarily mind as they didn’t use a lot of it. The soundtrack didn’t really stand out or hurt the film, it did fit for what was needed. Overall I’d say this is just above average for me, but I would say if you’re a slasher fan to give this a viewing for sure.
My Rating: 6.5 out of 10