The Conjuring's Braintrust Wasn't So Sure About The Nun 2's Most Inventive Scare
Now that we're nine films into the Conjuring Universe, the series has more or less established a groove for itself, especially where the films' scares are concerned. For the main "Conjuring" films, the scares are "Exorcist" and "Poltergeist"-esque, built around the demon ghosts that Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) encounter as they try to vanquish them. For the spin-off series like the "Annabelle" movies and "The Curse of La Llorona," the titular demon characters act much like franchise slasher villains like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, stalking and murdering their prey through various means.
"The Nun" films are no exception to this rule, as the latest entry, "The Nun II," features the Demon Nun (Bonnie Aarons) stalking and killing her innocent victims using everything from good old-fashioned neck-breaking to spontaneous combustion. Yet these "kill scenes" are only a portion of the whole film, as every good horror movie must be well-rounded with a variety of spooky elements.
To this end, director Michael Chaves concocted a scare sequence that's so original, not only had its like not appeared in a Conjuring Universe film before, but he quickly realized that it hadn't been attempted for very practical reasons. As seen in one of the movie's trailers, it's the moment where the heroine, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), is menaced by the Demon Nun as she emerges through a magazine rack. To make the scene happen, Chaves had to go out on a limb, with even the Conjuring Universe's braintrust not sure if the scene could be pulled off.
Bringing the past back from the dead
One of the things the Conjuring Universe films do so well is exploit their period settings for maximum creepiness. The films being set at various points from the 1950s-1980s isn't just for logical reasons, as the real-life Warrens were most active during the '70s and '80s. It also allows the franchise to homage the classic horror films of those eras, as well as tap into the still popular vaporwave and analog horror trends. As seen in current zeitgeist-y experimental horror films like last January's "Skinamarink," there's something inherently creepy about a past aesthetic.
It's just that aesthetic that Chaves was looking to make use of when he came up with the magazine rack gag for "The Nun II." As he explained to /Film's own Jacob Hall during a recent interview:
"This was an idea that I brought to the table very early on and it was a very loose idea. It came from ... I was just looking at old pictures of France and Spain during the '50s and I saw all these magazine stands and I just thought it's such, just because of the way prints changed, you don't really see a lot of magazine stands. They're not a fixture of streets and you don't see them on every corner anymore. So when I was looking at these old photos, I was like, 'This is amazing. This is such a great relic of the past and it really makes you feel like you're in the '50s.' And then I was looking at these photos and it's just on every magazine, it was this incredible illustrated or photographic cover, everything looked like it was so '50s and I just thought that would be an awesome thing to have in the movie."
Convincing the braintrust (or not)
In "The Nun II," there are multiple ways the Demon Nun attacks her victims, yet the magazine rack sequence doesn't quite conform to any of them. Instead, it's a moment that has as much to do with the dreamlike, hallucinatory visions experienced by Sister Irene as it does with the demon, Valak. While it's extremely similar to scenes featuring Lorraine Warren in the "Conjuring" films (specifically "The Conjuring 2," when Lorraine confronts Valak herself), the sequence doesn't have the same "rules" as the rest of the Valak scenes in "The Nun II."
This must've already made it a bit of a challenge for Chaves to convince producers James Wan and Peter Safran to let him include the setpiece; even more of a challenge was pitching the idea to the braintrust and the studio when the director was still struggling to articulate the concept full stop. Fortunately, the braintrust put their faith in Chaves, as he further explained:
"I was like, 'What if there's an element of flip books that mix with collages?' And it basically is just a way that the Nun can manifest itself. And I was pitching that early on, and to everybody's credit, I had no idea what I was going to do with it. It was such a rough idea. It seriously sounded like somebody crazy: 'It's a scene with a newsstand and it's a flip book and it's collage!' But honestly, to the credit of New Line and James [Wan] and Peter [Safran], they were totally supportive. They were like, 'We don't totally see it, but go with God. Go ahead.'"
'If I knew how complicated it was, I don't know if I would've jumped into it'
In the film, the final magazine rack gag involves Sister Irene coming upon a rack of magazines on a street in a small French town. As she watches in growing terror, the magazines begin to flip their own pages, each subsequent page revealing a series of images that feel increasingly unsettling. Eventually, the images begin to form a larger image made up of the other, smaller pictures surrounding them, one that eventually resembles the figure of the Demon Nun.
Despite it being 2023 and having numerous powers of CGI and practical effects at his disposal, Chaves was still daunted by how to get this moment on screen. As he elaborated:
"... it was incredibly complicated. I wanted to do at least a chunk of it practically, that we did, and there's mechanical effects in there, but those became really problematic and they would break and it was just always falling apart. So there is an element of visual effects that went into it and helped align the papers and then just sped up the papers [...] It was the last thing that I was working on. We were literally finishing visual effects shots up until the very last day that we could [...] It's one of those things, if I knew how complicated it was, I don't know if I would've jumped into it as blindly as I did, but I'm glad that I did"
The scene not only got finished, but it turned out so well that it may just turn out to be regarded as the signature moment of "The Nun II" going forward. While they may be set in the past, it's wonderful that "The Nun II" and the Conjuring Universe can still find ways to push horror films forward in this manner.
"The Nun II" is currently playing in theaters.