The Nun Trailer: Taissa Farmiga Is Trapped In A Haunted Abbey
Pack your bags, we're heading to Romania. Specifically, the demonic nun-haunted abbey at a Romanian castle in The Nun, which just launched its first teaser trailer on Wednesday.
The footage spotlights Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene, a young novitiate (a nun in training, essentially) who is sent by the Vatican to the Cârța Monastery in Romania to investigate the suspicious suicide of another nun. A priest named Father Burke, played by Demián Bichir, joins Sister Irene on her mission. Together, the pair unravel the abbey's unholy secret and endanger their lives — and their souls — as they face off against a hostile supernatural force: Valak, the demonic entity introduced in 2016's The Conjuring 2, seen ceaselessly tormenting Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga, the older sister of Taissa) with apparitions of her husband Ed (Patrick Wilson).
With this first taste of The Nun, it seems apparent that director Corin Hardy has crafted a seriously spooky spinoff, touting everything that made its direct predecessor The Conjuring 2 and the four Conjuring Universe series installments that came before it completely terrifying and kicking things up a notch.
Watch the footage in full above.
Though this short trailer for The Nun is quite simple, establishing the premise and then focusing on a single scene in which Valka stalks and attacks Farmiga's Sister Irene, it does a nice job of laying the foundation for the frights to come and highlighting how the film's southeastern European landscape and early 1950s time setting influences the overall mood. As screenwriter Gary Dauberman (It) explained to Entertainment Weekly, fellow writer and Conjuring franchise creator James Wan had a specific vision for The Nun and wanted it to be set in Romania to make use of its historic architecture, rocky mountains, and overall grandeur. Hey, the bigger the creepy castles, the more places Valak can hide (and kill) in, right?
What this trailer fails to do, however, is offer a reason as to why Valak takes on the form of a nun for a second time. In The Conjuring 2, Valak assumed the guise for the sole purpose of tormenting Lorraine Warren, who was a devout Catholic. Perhaps the events of The Nun mark the first time Valak ever presented as a nun, considering The Nun is set in 1952 and The Conjuring 2 in 1976 and 1977, and maybe the entity later chose to establish a pattern of assuming the nun form when interacting with anyone tied to religion. That would certainly be the cleanest explanation, but, as with any entry in the Conjuring film series, twists and turns are inevitable. Whatever ends up happening, we'll be watching through our fingers.
The Nun will scare us all starting September 7.