Releasing a third spin-off film to accompany the main series, writer and producer James Wan hopes to suspend audiences in fear with The Nun on Sept. 6.  In order to bring a solidified beginning for the start of The Conjuring movies, The Nun is advertised as the origin to all these films — the beginning of all evil.

Adara Gonzalez, 9, possesses a heighten interest in horror and horror motion pictures.  She is intrigued by what The Nun has to offer but, like other scare loving underclassmen, she hasn’t viewed it yet.  

“It felt like the horror movies that grab your attention,” Gonzalez stated. “[The trailer] is not trying to scare you off.”

The movie seeks audiences of all types and attempts to avoid major scares in its trailer.  However, this reflects poor scare value as the movie heavily relies on altering, irregular jump-scares. Now that the film has been released worldwide, audiences can gauge how it was for them.

A Conjuring series fan and movie viewer, senior Naomi Mendoza, felt mixed feelings after watching The Nun on opening day.

“I felt excited because a new scary movie was going to come out,” Mendoza said.  “[But] I kind of disliked it because once I was watching it I already had an expectation of how scary it was going to be and it ended up not being as scary as I expected it to be.”          

Reoccurring as as a consistent issue with the horror genre, how scary a movie is often determines its value. A scary movie does not need to make audiences run out of the theater in fright but requires a gripping, spine-chilling factor.  Even with this horror flick using the demon of Valak, a fan favorite ‘monster’ introduced in The Conjuring 2, as the center of its story, it falls short in development and connection with the characters.

Having recently gone to see The Nun, senior Andrew Salazar analyzes and critiques the film through his seasoned movie buff lenses.

“It needed attachment to the characters…a level of scareness, music, and intensity to make it successful… take Insidious for example,” Salazar explains.  “I know they [filmmakers] wanted to try something from a different angle, maybe they took it the wrong way…The Nun tried to be too serious.”

Not entirely successful as a scary movie, The Nun, was an enjoyable watch for those that viewed it.  That being said it did not follow through with its basic expectations as a Conjuring film with a simplified premise and jump scares as its only source of horror.