Movie Review The Nun 2

The Nun 2 (2023) 

Directed by Michael Chaves

Written by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, Akela Cooper 

Starring Taissa Farmiga, Storm Reid, Jonas Bloquet, Anna Popplewell, Bonnie Aarons 

Release Date September 8th, 2023 

Published September 8th, 2023 

After honestly enjoying a rewatch of The Nun (2018) recently, I was pretty excited for the sequel. The thing that I really enjoyed about The Nun is the design of the villain, Valek The Nun. She's terrifying to look at and actress Bonnie Aarons infuses her presence with menacing physicality. It's a mostly silent performance and she has a silent film villain quality that I really enjoy. She reminds me of something out of the classic German silent horror movie lore. That's kind of awesome for a modern horror villain. 

I also appreciated how clean her motivations are as a villain. The main issue I take with The Conjuring Universe is the vagary. Whether it is a lack of care or a desire to make their villains mysterious, we're never allowed to understand what motivates the evil entities. Why possess children or old women? How does slamming doors or knocking pictures off the wall serve the ultimate purpose of these villains? Why all of the farting around playing scary pranks? Why not just do the thing you came her to do? 

The Nun made very clear that Valek has a goal, to escape from her Hellish prison in Romania. Once escaped, as we learn in this movie, her goal is revenge on the line of religious order that punished her with an ultimate goal of obtaining a thing that will expand her powers. Cool, she has a purpose and she sets herself to achieving that purpose. Sadly, in The Nun 2, it's clear that there was a studio mandate that we get more scares and a body count. 

The first film had a mostly off camera body count. Nuns in an Abbey in Romania have been dying by suicide, or so we are told. The reality is the evil of Valek killing them. We only find this out after the Nun's are dead and their deaths are investigated by Father Burke (Demian Bechir) and Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) who encounter their ghosts and the evil of Valek that is attempting to escape. Most of The Nun is about atmosphere and lore and that was really fun. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review: Missing

Missing (2023) 

Directed by Nick Johnson, Will Merrick 

Written by Sev Ohanian, Aneesh Chaganty 

Starring Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published January 23rd, 2023 

Missing captures our modern true crime obsession in a way that few films ever had. Every true crime fan dreams of doing what the main character of Missing does, diving down a rabbit hole of information on your way to solving a mystery. Of course, the main character of Missing has more motivation than your average true crime fan, but that doesn't change the nature of our excitement, all true crime fans want to investigate leads and follow threads to answers in the way that June (Storm Reid) does in missing, whether it's our family member that is missing or some stranger. 

In Missing, June is a typically self-involved teenager who is constantly mortified by how uncool her mother, Grace (Nia Long), is. Mom is always asking her Siri to make calls for her, even while she's already on a call. Mom and June's relationship is strained as Grace is a working single mom juggling her daughter, work, and a new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), while planning a vacation to Columbia. June is of little help, she's only thinking of the partying she's going to do while Mom and Kevin are out of town. 

Over the course of five days, Mom checks in rarely, which is unusual, while June parties. Then, when it's time for June to meet Mom and Kevin at the airport, she's left standing there for hours. Mom doesn't come home. Returning to her house, June calls the authorities and falls down a rabbit hole while investigating her mother's whereabouts. In the course of investigating her mother's disappearance from afar, she connects with a man named Javi (Joachim De Almeida), who lives in Columbia and who agrees to investigate on her behalf for a mere $8.00 per request. 

Meanwhile, at home, Grace breaks into Kevin's email and begins to discover things about his past, his criminal record, and the many, many, women in Kevin's past who claim that he's stolen money from them. There's also a woman, referred to only as 'babycakes,' who has recently gone missing after trading messages with Kevin. This can't be a coincidence but the movie has a few more twists and turns in play when it comes to Kevin, some you won't be able to predict so easily. 

Missing doesn't quite have the skillful presentation of its predecessor, Searching. That film used the medium of internet based sleuthing in service of a much better story. The story of Missing isn't bad but it's far more deeply convoluted than that of Searching. Where that movie had a relative clarity to its logical storytelling, Missing falls short. If you start pulling threads on Missing the story frays with far too much ease. The main plot is rather silly with characters making choices that don't make a lot of sense. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Don't Let Go

Don't Let Go (2019)

Directed by Jacob Aaron Estes

Written by Jacob Aaron Estes

Starring David Oyelowo, Brian Tyree Henry, Storm Reid, Mykelti Williamson

Release Date August 30th, 2019

Published August 29th, 2019 

Don’t Let Go is a pulse-pounding stunner of a time travel thriller. David Oyelowo stars in Don’t Let go as Detective Jack Radcliff, an L.A cop with a very close relationship with his niece, Ashley (Storm Reid). Ashley’s dad, played in a cameo by Bryan Tyree Henry, is a troubled songwriter and part time drug dealer, who has recently gotten deep in over his head. It’s led him to neglect his daughter, and place his family in danger. 

How much danger? When Jack goes for a visit to his brother’s home, he finds the door standing open. Inside, he finds his brother’s wife on the floor, shot dead. Upstairs, Jack finds the body of his brother, dead from a gunshot wound to the head which we see in grisly detail as Jack’s grief overcomes him and he clutches his brother's gaping skull, attempting to hold closed the already fatal wound. 

The most devastating blow however, is yet to come. After finding his brother’s body, Jack goes looking for Ashley and finds her shot to death in the family bathroom, her attempt to flee through a window cut short. It’s a stunning scene and one played by David Oyelowo with a forlorn resignation and jarring emotionality. Oyelowo may be slight in build but his emotional stature is towering and in this scene, devastating. 

In another universe, we would get a straight ahead cop procedural in which Jack tracks down the killers, held back by the rules of law and probably some insider corruption that keeps the baddies ahead of his every move until he’s able to outwit them. That’s not, however, what Don’t Let Go is. This is nothing remotely typical. Written and directed by Jacob Estes, best known for the indie thriller Mean Creek, Don’t Let Go has a time travel conceit that subverts expectations in wonderfully inventive and genuinely surprising ways. 

Days after laying his family to rest, Jack’s phone rings and the display claims that the call is coming from Ashley’s phone. The calls keep coming until finally Jack answers and finds Ashley on the other end. No, she’s not survived by some miracle, she’s actually calling from two weeks in the past, a time before the murder. How is this possible? The filmmakers don’t appear to care about that and neither should we. 

The most important thing to consider in order to find Don’t Let Go as compelling and excited as I did, is not to get caught up on why this is happening. For me, the rest of Don’t Let Go is so interesting, so unique and attention grabbing, I simply bought into the story and went where the movie wanted to take me. I bought into the suspense, I bought into the blood and guts and I bought into this complicated premise that might prove to be a dealbreaker for less committed audience members. 

You cannot overestimate how incredible David Oyelowo is in Don’t Let Go. Oyelowo has remarkable instincts, his eyes are so alive and compelling. You never catch Oyelowo acting and yet the look on his face demonstrates wheels turning and remarkable effort. The blood, the sweat, the dirt, Oyelowo lives this role and I found his intensity and commitment impossible to resist. The same could be said of his young co-star, Storm Reid. Reid impressed me in Ava Duvernay's wonderful, A Wrinkle in Time and she's equally as impressive here as she attempts to solve her own murder. 

Don’t Let Go absolutely came out of nowhere for me. The generic title made me believe this was going to be a minor and forgettable and perhaps that low bar helped a little. Writer-director Jacob Estes makes a strong case that Don’t Let Go with its unusual time travel premise and heart-stopping suspense is just a really great thriller. The pace is perfectly calibrated and the film score is among the best of 2019. 

Don’t Let Go is exceptional and at a time where we lack in great thrillers, the film stands out that much more for being a classic piece of genre filmmaking.