Part folklore horror, part siege movie, part creature feature – Corin Hardy’s debut The Hallow was a potent combination of horror genres. It’s no wonder Hollywood came calling, and for his next movie he’s entering James Wan’s Conjuring-verse with The Nun. The titular sister – a wimple-wearing demon named Valak – made its first appearance in The Conjuring 2, and now its getting its own prequel going back to 1952 when it caused havoc at a Romanian monastery.
Empire has two new pictures from the film, as seen in the forthcoming new issue – one showing new character Father Burke, played by Demián Bichir, being preyed upon, and the other revealing Valak in all its spooky glory.
If you’ve seen The Nun’s first trailer, you’ll undoubtedly have been caught off guard by am impressively-staged jump-scare – and Hardy is all about building atmospheric set-ups and bone-rattling pay-offs. “It’s a bigger movie in many ways than something like The Hallow, but it’s also a grounded movie in that we’re doing it all for real,” he told Empire in the new issue. “There’s very little CGI: actually less CGI than even The Hallow. We’re concentrating more on complex choreography and mind-trickery.”
Read plenty more about The Nun in Empire’s September issue, on sale Thursday 9 August and available to preorder online now{
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