Released: 20th October
Seen: 7th November
If you’re looking for a scary location to set a film, you can’t really go wrong with a giant convent full of nuns. There’s just something about a building where a bunch of nuns live that has some inherent dread to it, something about the old style of the building combined with a group of people in shapeless outfits that seemingly glide about while occasionally stopping to sing snarky songs about other nuns and what a problem they are, it’s all a bit unnerving. It clearly has to be an easy choice for a lot of creatives because there’s a lot of horror media that use the setup, from the legendary second season of American Horror Story to the surprising hit series The Nun. Hell, there’s an entire subgenre known as Nunsploitation that’s just about doing fucked up stuff with Nuns so it’s clearly something that’s been done for a while, which is why Sister Death might not feel that surprising but it’s still a damn good scary time.
Sister Death, or Hermana Muerte in the original Spanish, tells the story of a young woman named Narcisa (Aria Bedmar) who as a child performed a miracle that made her a favourite of her town and gave her worldwide press. Now she’s old enough to join a convent to help teach the young students, though she’s heavily disliked by the older nuns around as Narcisa is willing to listen to the children’s wild stories. Those stories are about a strange and powerful spirit who seems to haunt the convent and if it writes your name then you’re cursed and the spirit will come and kill you. Of course, the other Nuns don’t believe it but Narcisa can sense something is amiss, there’s something that the other Nuns are keeping secret about the convent’s past and Narcisa is determined to figure it out.
Sister Death is apparently a prequel to the directors other possession-based horror film Verónica. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that one but fortunately it’s not required viewing for this film as the only linking character appears to be in the final scene as a cameo (if the Wikipedia description of Verónica is accurate). So you are able to treat Sister Death as a stand-alone film and in that respect it’s absolutely great, just oozing with tension and sinister delight from start to finish accompanied by several viscerally upsetting sequences that really elevate this from a standard haunting film to something that feels much more fresh.
Sister Death really leans hard into a nice pure simple look for the central location, not only does everything look several centuries old but it’s all so pale and colourless that it helps create a sense of unease, plus it helps the bright red blood stand out so much more when the film decides to spill a bit. There truly is nothing as unnerving as the sight of something pure white slowly being covered in blood from a mysterious source, it’s a simple thing but it looks amazing every time and Sister Death absolutely revels in that fact. It doesn’t need to go for extreme gore or anything, this isn’t that kind of horror film but it knows that the stark contrast of the unnerving white robes and the blood coming from a mystery place will look great every single damn time.
Sister Death also knows how to handle simple effective scares, just slowly building tension throughout and dropping little story crumbs that set up future terrifying moments. It also delves into some nightmare imagery that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Nightmare on Elm Street series and it really works, managing to make moments that will have you recoiling a little from the things being presented on screen. It does occasionally become hard to distinguish what is and isn’t a nightmare, especially the further the film goes on and the more extreme everything gets, but the actual imagery is truly terrifying.
The big problem that Sister Death has is the ending which is a little bit nonsensical. Without delving into spoilers it involves flashbacks and revenge and the explanation behind it doesn’t really work, it feels like it’s just a weird ending that was made at the last minute to try and give the film a semi-satisfying conclusion but it ends up just kind of being a confusing mess. It’s a confusing mess with some fantastic imagery that was still fun to witness but still a bit of a confusing mess right at the end.
Despite dropping the ball right near the end, Sister Death is a pretty damn good Nun-based horror film with enough interesting scares and brutal imagery to give almost anyone a good scare. Filled with some fascinating characters who are a lot of fun to spend time with, even if you spend all that time hating them for being the standard evil Nuns we all know and hate, Sister Death stands alone as a fascinatingly creepy take on the demonic possession genre. Just a good solid scary 90-minute horror film, we just don’t get enough of those anymore.
Movie Meister Reviews 