Do you want to know one sure-fire way to make your horror movie 100% scarier? Have actual ghosts visit your film set. If this practice actually works, then Corin Hardy's The Nun will be bone-chillingly terrifying, as the director spins an unnerving story of an encounter he had with two spirits while trying to secure a complicated shot in a creepy Romanian castle. Really, it's better to let Hardy tell this story. He relays it really well:
Did that send chills down your spine? We listened to Corin Hardy tell this story during New Line's ScareDiego horror film-fest event, which has become an annual tradition for horror lovers on Wednesday night as the kickoff of Comic-Con. So when The Nun director swung by CinemaBlend's interview suite in San Diego, we asked him to rekindle some of our worst nightmares by relaying it one more time. He added a few juicy details. It doesn't disappoint.
This is why we are holding out hope that The Nun won't disappoint, either. And the footage that we saw from the movie at ScareDiego goes a long way toward setting up another satisfying chapter in the growing Conjuring Shared Universe. The character of the Nun was recently showcased in James Wan's The Conjuring 2, and Wan receives screenwriting credits on Corin Hardy's feature film (alongside Gary Dauberman, who is directing the next Annabelle movie). And Hardy tells CinemaBlend that The Nun will explore some of the valuable backstory of the malevolent force that threatens a novitiate (Taissa Farmiga) and a seasoned priest (Demian Bichir) when they investigate a nun who takes her own life.
As fun as Corin Hardy's story was, the sight of him holding a small doll of his terrifying nun while also wearing a mock Infinity Gauntlet basically wins the day at the CinemaBlend video suite:
The Conjuring universe continues to grow with new horror tales like The Nun, which looks to take full advantage of the fact that it's set in the 1950s, and shot in Romanian castles and fortresses. The footage that we were able to see at the ScareDiego event had a mood and an atmosphere that was different from anything established in either James Wan's Conjuring films, or the two Annabelle stories. And Corin Hardy suggested that The Nun could inspire a traditional sequel, or it could lead to a spinoff for a potentially interesting character that people will meet in this movie... much the same way that audiences were introduced to the Nun in a Conjuring film, giving her a new platform of her own to terrify.
The Nun opens in theaters on September 7.
