Watch out, everybody, there’s a powerful new cinematic universe out there and it’s James Wan’s The Conjuring franchise. After a pair of successful horror movies and a third likely on the way, it’s now spawned the equally-lucrative Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation centered on the demon doll glimpsed in the first movie. There’s also a movie based on the Crooked Man seen in The Conjuring 2, and lastly there’s The Nun, which opens later this year directed by The Hallow‘s Corin Hardy.
The spooky first trailer has arrived and no, that isn’t Marilyn Manson it’s the titular demonic nun who caused such terror in The Conjuring 2. Penned by red-hot It and Annabelle writer Gary Dauberman, the film is a prequel set in 1950s Romania where the Vatican has sent a priest and novitiate to investigate the suspicious suicide of a nun at a monastery.
The film stars Demian Bichir and Taissa Farmiga, the latter joining the same cinematic universe as her older sister, Vera. The resemblance is uncanny and one can’t help but wonder if her casting was purposeful. I don’t know if they’re going to draw a straight line between Taissa’s Sister Irene character and Vera’s Lorraine Warren, but would anybody be surprised if they did?
Here’s the synopsis: “When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in “The Conjuring 2,” as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.”
The Nun opens on September 7th.
