Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Nun and The Nun II.
Of all the supernatural beings in The Conjuring Universe, few are as purely evil as the Nun (Bonnie Aarons). This supernatural entity is a demon known as Valak who takes different forms in order to exploit the weaknesses of its targeted victims. The sinister Nun first appears in The Conjuring 2 as a harbinger of death. As the franchise has spiraled, Valak has turned out to be the root cause of much of the underlying possessions connected to the Warrens and their paranormal investigations.
The Nun, a 2018 prequel directed by Corin Hardy, gives this haunting image a harrowing origin story dating back to 1952. A gothic monastery in Cârța, Romania becomes the site of unspeakable evil as Valak takes the form of a pale-faced nun and roams the halls at night. A young novitiate called Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) uses her faith and her psychic abilities to seal the portal and send this vile entity back to hell. Valak returns in Michael Chaves‘s 2023 film The Nun II, which follows Sister Irene as she chases the Nun across Europe.
Hardy’s film is filled with horrific gothic imagery from the cavernous monastery to its moon-lit cemeteries. However, despite these terrifying scenes, the film deals more in frightening visions than in outright aggression. Early promotion for Chaves’s film promised more violence. But is this true? Is The Nun II actually more brutal than its predecessor, or is the original film still queen of the ring? To settle this question, let’s examine each film’s signature sequences in a head to head battle of the Nuns to see which one packs a more destructive punch.
Hanging Sister VS Burning Father
‘The Nun’
The Nun begins in the bowels of the Cârța Monastery. A pair of frightened nuns walk down a dark tunnel filled with crosses and approach a door emblazoned with the ominous Latin translation for “God ends here.” While one sister ventures into the pitch-black tunnel, the other waits outside praying for her safe return. After a few moments of terror, she bursts out of the corridor covered in blood. The doomed nun screams a warning before she’s dragged back into the abyss by an unseen force. With her sister’s words echoing in her ears, the surviving nun retreats to her room and prepares to make a horrific sacrifice. As the sinister figure of a nun drifts towards her, she jumps from the window with a noose around her neck, warning all who visit the monastery of the evil lurking within.
The Nun II takes the opening of the original film and ups the ante. In Tarascon, France, mass has just concluded when a young altar boy notices a malevolent presence as he reshelves the communion wine. He runs for the safety of the sanctuary as the shadowy figure of a Nun begins to appear. Boiling holy water is a harbinger for the terrifying death to come. As the frightened boy watches, the priest is lifted into the air, twisted and broken by unseen hands before bursting into flames.
Winner: The Nun II
While the opening scene of The Nun boasts more victims, we’re giving the first matchup to the sequel. We don’t see the impact of the sister’s demise, only the jerk of the furniture on the other end of the rope. We do see her body and blood spatter later, but this scene relies more on haunting imagery than any kind of violence. However, this opening sequence of The Nun II not only puts a child in danger, but it seems to defy the laws of physics and subjects a priest to one of the most painful deaths imaginable.
Tragic Rumors VS a Deadly Delivery
‘The Nun’
Valak’s unholy energy seems to emanate from the isolated monastery and filter out to the surrounding town. After finding the doomed nun hanging outside the castle door, Maurice (Jonas Bloquet) dreams of fresh blood spilling down the monastery’s steps. At a local pub, he learns of a series of deaths in the neighboring village including that of a twelve year old girl who hung herself in her father’s barn.
The sequel features a similar scene as Sister Irene is reluctantly drawn back into the Nun’s circle. As it turns out, the father’s immolation is only one of a string of upsetting deaths unfolding across Europe. An agent of the Vatican enlists Sister Irene’s help by presenting an array of upsetting black and white images and brutal descriptions of the Nun’s carnage. Not content to merely tell, Chaves shows us the depths of Valak’s power with an early scene in a French boarding school. A young girl delivering charcuterie witnesses Valak communicating with a mysterious man. He approaches with the Nun’s spirit billowing out behind and snaps the poor girl’s neck.
Winner: The Nun II
With a smaller cast, The Nun only features the ghost of a child long dead. Valak’s evil is mostly contained to the convent and though tragedy may occur outside its walls, we don’t actually see it. The Nun II crosses a taboo line in horror and actually kills children. We see the violent death of an innocent tween, not to mention an entire school full of girls who may soon become food for the malevolent beast.
Daniel VS Madam and Her Son
‘The Nun’
The one child we do see in the first film emerges from Father Burke’s (Demián Bichir) past. Years ago, a boy named Daniel (August Maturo) died after a botched exorcism led by the solitary priest. Sensing his lingering guilt, Valak takes the form of the deceased child in order to torment and distract Father Burke from his mission. This frightening apparition repeatedly lures him into danger and attempts to possess his body as the demon’s power grows stronger.
After criss-crossing Europe, Valak begins to torment the students and staff of a girl’s boarding school in France. The headmistress Madame Laurent (Suzanne Bertish) receives the worst of this torture in one of the most upsetting scenes in Chaves’s film. Hearing strange noises, she enters the chapel believing one of her students may be in danger. She stares in wonder as the ghost of her long-dead son appears from the shadows, swinging a thurible. Madame’s joy at seeing the young boy again quickly turns to horror as he brutally beats her with the heavy incense burner and leaves her to die on the chapel floor.
Winner: The Nun II
We don’t want to minimize the guilt Father Burke feels for contributing to the death of a helpless young boy, but it’s difficult to top a murdering a grieving mother with the apparition of her dead child. This one is no contest.
Buried Alive VS Magazine Attack
‘The Nun II’
Valak wastes no time making his sinister presence known. On their first night in the convent, Father Burke hears a strange noise in the middle of the night and follows visions of Daniel outside into the nearby cemetery. When a nightmarish snake slithers out of the boy’s gaping mouth, Father Burke stumbles backward into an open grave. He somehow finds himself buried alive under a headstone bearing his own name. Thankfully Sister Irene is able to use her second sight to locate him amidst the many ringing safety bells. Unfortunately, Father Burke is not alone in the coffin. While Sister Irene frantically digs, the Nun appears behind him and wrenches at his face with her claw-like hands.
Having traveled across Europe to find the Nun, Sister Irene and a young apprentice named Debra (Storm Reid) finally arrive in Tarascon, France. While Debra deals with their lodging, Sister Irene ventures out into the darkened streets. Approaching a newsstand, she stares in horror as the pages of magazines begin to turn on their own. The shape of the Nun appears as Sister Irene leans in for a closer look. With a single blink of the light, she materializes amidst the magazines. The Nun grabs Sister Irene and lifts her up by her throat, triggering a powerful vision that leaves her lying comatose by the road.
Winner: The Nun
While this magazine stand sequence is one of the most creative in franchise history, the thought of being buried alive is tough to beat. As if finding yourself trapped in a coffin planted six feet underground weren’t scary enough, the hands emerging from even deeper in the Earth add physical pain to emotional terror.
Cemetery Attack VS the Possession of Maurice
‘The Nun’
After delivering Sister Irene and Father Burke to the monastery, Maurice must make his way home in the dark. Wandering through the cross-filled grounds, he sees the vision of a nun dragging a noose through the evening mist. She suddenly drops from a tree right on top of him, stopping at the end of the rope around her neck. The decomposing body of the nun he found hanging over the Monastery’s stairs now attacks him, roaring with sharpened teeth into his screaming face.
Investigation reveals that the Nun has been following Maurice’s journeys from city to city, leaving death in its wake. The demon has possessed his body and used him as a vessel to travel throughout the world. As Valak’s power grows stronger, Maurice’s suffering compounds. Not only does this spirit make his body jerk and convulse, it also brings up inverted crosses beneath his skin. Once Irene arrives, the Nun’s power seems to grow and takes full possession of Maurice. He and the Sisters engage in a number of physical altercations as they all fight for control of the poor man’s body.
Winner: The Nun
Maurice’s vague possession is indeed horrific, but it seems to cause more harm to those around him. Not only is Hardy’s cemetery sequence one of the film’s most successful, it’s punctuated by an endearing joke when Maurice wrenches a large cross out of the ground and totes it around for protection.
The Duke VS Saint Lucy
‘The Nun’
Though The Nun and its sequel both serve as prequels to The Conjuring 2, each film contains its own expositional flashback. Centuries before Sister Irene visits the convent, the Duke of Cârța embarks on a ritual of his own. With bodies hung upside down over a pentagram on the floor, he attempts to open a doorway between earth and Hell. Valak is crossing through this portal when Knights of the Templar burst in and interrupt the ritual. With swords drawn, they seal the portal with the blood of Christ then store the holy relic in a nearby passageway.
Chaves’s film expands the legend of the Nun in a brutal flashback only Irene can see. A woman kneels in front of a fire and a man in a red robe. He approaches the girl and gouges out her eyes, brutally thrusting a knife into her face before setting her on fire. We later learn that this is the legendary Saint Lucy, patron saint of the blind. Valak, a former angel rejected by God, is crossing the continent in search of her eyes, which have become a powerful relic.
Winner: The Nun
This one is a no brainer. Though the mangled bodies hanging over the Duke’s pentagram are horrific, we don’t see any actual violence. However, the Saint Lucy flashback is horrendous. Not only do we see a blazing body, but a man stabs a knife directly into the face of a kneeling woman. Her actual eyes are hidden by a hood, but the disturbing violence is perfectly clear.
A Dead Sister Attacks VS Maurice Attacks the Sisters
‘The Nun’
When Sister Irene enters the chapel to pray, she sees the body of a nun she’d talked to earlier laying dead on the floor next to the altar, her body covered with a sheet. Unfortunately, the deceased sister is not at rest. Reanimated by Valak, she stabs Father Burke with a wooden cross. They wrestle with the hideous corpse as the Father burns a crucifix into her skin. This lights the sheet on fire and the blazing body lumbers forward, only stopped by a rifle shot from Maurice.
Chaves’s film unfolds over parallel stories as the demon hiding inside Maurice terrorizes the boarding school while Sister Irene puts the pieces together. These two narrative tracks converge in an explosive final act when she and Deb finally arrive at the school. Unfortunately, we don’t get the happy reunion fans of the original might have been hoping for. Maurice approaches Irene and she shies away, knowing that the demon has possessed his body. With its secret out, Valak takes control and attacks the two diminutive nuns. Maurice slams them into walls, bashes their heads into the floor, and throws them through the air trying to kill the only people capable of preventing the demon’s evil designs.
Winner: The Nun II
This is only one of the many fight scenes scattered through Chaves’s film. While the vision of an undead nun bursting into flames is certainly horrific, it’s not nearly as upsetting as watching a beloved character brutally attack two much smaller women.
The Icehouse VS Madame’s Office
‘The Nun’
The nun who jumps from the monastery’s window may not survive the opening act, but her body makes several appearances throughout the film. Maurice moves it to the icehouse to protect it from the elements, though he returns to find the corpse in a different position. They give the deceased sister a proper burial on the convent grounds, but still she does not rest. A later scene shows Father Burke following the bell from her grave back into the icehouse. Her decaying body suddenly bursts out of a freezer and attacks the priest. She’s poised to kill him when Maurice intervenes to cut off her head.
Though the sinister Nun is Chaves’s overt villain, a group of mean girls also terrorize the school. An early scene shows them sending cockroaches through a vent into the headmistress’s office, a prank that will come back to haunt them. Seeking shelter from the rampaging demon, the girls attempt to crawl through this same tunnel into the safety of her study. Unfortunately the room is not empty. Madame’s corpse appears and pounces on the girl, pulling her back through the vent by the head.
Winner: The Nun II
Though both of these scenes are equally violent, Chaves’s film just barely edges out the win by victimizing a child. Adding insult to injury, there is also a certain sick catharsis in seeing the mean girl terrorized by the very roaches she once used to torment Madame.
Evil Abbess VS Devil Goat
‘The Nun’
Though the Nun mostly appears in iconic black and white vestments, this manipulative demon is capable of taking any form it wishes. Upon arriving at the cavernous monastery, the three travelers encounter the convent’s Abbess completely covered by a thick, black veil. On a second encounter, Father Burke leans in for a closer look as a cold hand grabs his wrist. The sinister Abbess slowly reveals herself to be Valak in disguise, growling a hideous prophecy about Sister Irene’s death as she attacks Father Burke.
One of the scariest beings in all of James Wan’s connected universe appears in Chaves’s final act. A stained glass window in the school’s ruined chapel features the ruby eyes of a devilish goat. The students insist that if you hold the goat’s gaze until the precise moment of sunset, the devil will appear in the room. Hoping to achieve maximum terror, Valak takes this form and emerges from the shadows with curved horns and hooved feet. This goat creeps through the darkness and smashes its way through the school, scaring the daylights out of the girls and their teacher. Not content to merely frighten, this beast gores through a barricaded door as well as the shoulder of one of the students.
Winer: The Nun II
Not only does this beast actually injure a child, it also provides quite a bit of nightmare fuel, far surpassing the admittedly terrifying vision of the Abbess who doesn’t inflict much physical damage.
Sister Irene Becomes the Host VS Sister Irene Will Not Burn
‘The Nun’
After rising from hell, Valak’s ultimate goal is to occupy a human host and escape into the larger world. Hoping to close the portal to hell, Sister Irene inadvertently provides a living vessel for the demonic entity. Valak marks her by cutting a pentacle into the skin of her back while she tries to pray in the wind-swept chapel. Backed into the portal by ghostly nuns, Sister Irene levitates as Valak seizes possession of her body. Though Maurice ultimately saves her with the blood of Christ, she takes quite a beating in order to expel the demon. Valak lifts her up by her neck, throws her into a flooded chamber, and holds her head under water until she appears to be dead.
Once again Chaves’s sequel builds upon the first film’s horror. At the peak of her powers, the Nun lifts Irene high up into the air and lights her on fire. Though, like Saint Lucy, she does not burn. The flames seem to surround but not consume her, hinting at Sistre Irene’s holy lineage.
Winner: The Nun
Though burning bodies are never pleasant, Sister Irene doesn’t actually seem to be injured by the fire. Proving to be much more brutal, her showdown with Valak in the original film nearly costs the newly initiated nun her life.
The Two Possessions of Maurice
‘The Nun II’
At first appearing to be a supporting character, Maurice quickly works his way into the heart of the film. He returns in the nick of time and bravely enters the monastery’s unholy tunnels to help them seal the portal to hell. Unfortunately, this puts the French-Canadian farmer in a dangerous position. A snake-like demon slithers into his open mouth, transferring the evil into a living vessel. A later scene takes us back to the very beginning of The Conjuring franchise as Maurice endures a horrifying exorcism. Valak’s sinister crosses appear all over his body, a sign of the evil lurking beneath his skin.
Perhaps the worst pain someone so kind as Maurice could endure is that of hurting the people he loves. Possessed by Valak, Maurice sets his sights on his favorite student. Chasing her to the top of the bell tower, he plunges several stories to the hard ground below as the platform she clings to crumbles under his feet.
Winner: The Nun II
Maurice emerges from Hardy’s film relatively unharmed, as opposed to Chaves’s sequel which puts him through the wringer. Later films notwithstanding, Chaves does give him something of a happy ending. Not only does he have his own plot of tomatoes, but perhaps a family to help him tend them.
Final Score:
The Nun: 4
The Nun II: 7
Though both films succeed in providing some of the most frightening scares in The Conjuring Connected Universe, there’s no doubt that Chaves’s film is indeed more violent. With a larger cast mostly made up of children, the Nun’s second outing fights, smashes, and gores its way to a violent victory.