by Ben Pursel

This year marks a decade since the release of the first Conjuring movie. Ten years later, the franchise is still topping charts with the September 8 release of The Nun II.

A fresh continuation of the 2018 smash-hit The Nun, The Nun II offers the audience a glimpse into the past of some of the beloved characters from the original, all while maintaining the same breathless angst and sheer terror fans loved in the first film.

It’s no surprise that The Nun II had some big shoes to fill with its predecessor netting 365.5 million dollars in worldwide sales. Fortunately, director Michael Chaves met fans’ expectations and more with the film beating out Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting of Venice in total revenue. Despite being out for only 16 days, The Nun II has reached more than $204M in box office globally.

The story follows Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, younger sister of The Conjuring star, Vera Farmiga) as she settles into life at a convent in southern France following four years after the events of The Nun. There she meets the rebellious Sister Debra (Storm Reid) and learns, as viewers are told, “The demon lives.” The same horrific Valak (Bonnie Aarons) moviegoers met in the last film didn’t die and is now on a killing spree across western Europe.

The screenplay, written by Ian Goldberg, Akela Cooper and Richard Naing, places the majority of the action in an all-girls boarding school in Aix-en-Provence. Setting is one of the biggest pitfalls of the film with the sheer number of back-and-forth switches between only a handful of rooms creating monotony and some degree of predictability.

Otherwise, the movie does an incredible job of perpetuating the Conjuring universe, maintaining the anxious fear and chilling terror that net the franchise $2.3 billion in sales, while keeping it fresh, entertaining, and digestible for new viewers to the franchise.