The Nun (2005)

Director: Luis de la Madrid

Writers: Manu Diez, Jaume Balaguero

Composer: Luc Suarez

Starring: Anita Briem, Belen Blanco, Manu Fullola, Alistair Freeland, Cristina Piaget, Paulina Galvez, Natalia Dicenta, Lola Marceli, Tete Delgado

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  Not all water is holy

Plot: A group of teenage girls are terrorized by Sister Ursula, a nun that believes she must rid the world of all sin. After Sister Ursula mysteriously disappears, the Catholic school is shut down. Many years later, the women, all grown up, are terrorized by a ghostly nun. The daughter of one of the women sets out to find out what happened all those years ago.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No, not even with your crucifix.

Part of the Nunsploitation Project (July & August 2013). Click here for more naughty nun insanity! 

Ugh.  This is the last of the  Nunsploitation pictures on my list to watch for the project.  It starts out OK but then it gets ridiculous with the kids (teens/20-somethings) getting involved.  The last twenty minutes gets rid of a lot of characters (there was one neat kill, a pipe through the chest, but it wasn't nearly as effective as it could have been) but by then I'd already given up.

The underwater photography, though, looked fantastic and it gave the film a nice, eerie vibe but the story and direction couldn't make it work effectively. One of the characters says, "If she kills in water then maybe the only way she can die is in water." Really?  Since the nun was murdered by being drowned in a bathtub 18 years ago, she somehow can only kill those responsible by being surrounded by water which means the sink or tub overflows and there's a shroud of water around her as she walks or floats around the house chasing her victim.  I guess if you can buy that then you can buy that the only way she can be killed is to be underwater with the ghost nun and stab her to death or something.

The thing that ultimately bothered me about this picture is that there are an awful lot of leaps of logic that don't have any explanation behind them.  How is the nun able to come back at all?  Why wait 18 years to exact revenge? Why? Why? Why?  I don't need my hand held but there are so many aspects that aren't explained it feels like the film makers had no explanation and thought it would just be cool if this and if that.  That's fine but at least try with the story before making a picture.  There are also continuity shot issues and such.  There's also very little in the exploitation of nuns. No nudity, no nun hanky panky, just a few kills that hardly begin to make up for a lack of everything else. So, does this constitute being classified as a Nunsploitation movie?  It does have a nun but the killing ( the only non-nun-like behavior she exhibits) is done when she's a ghost.  If you want to be technical about it, then yes, it probably belongs on the fringes of the sub genre but I wouldn't discuss it alongside most any of the Nunsploitation pictures of the 1970s.  Those were a different breed altogether.  If you must see it, it's on Netflix streaming right now, which explains why I wasn't able to take any screenshots.  You're not missing anything all that great anyway.