(Quick Amityville scenes. I guess to explain why, in the timeline they are skipping to this story.

How were the kids still sleeping after shotgun blasts of parents death.

We meet the family in England. There are 4 children and their mother. By making the mother single, they don’t have the everything happens when dad’s at work trope, but they still have the woman home alone.

I like how when things start happening, the kids immediately tell their mother. I also like how this poltergeist doesn’t give a fuck who is there. The police come and even they see things..

The camerawork and editing were great in this. I especially liked the sequence with the news program interview. I watch old news shows on YouTube and the way that was shot and edited was dead on how those shows were in the 70s.

Some elements were repeated from the first movie and from Insidious. Like, a girl awakened by an entity, a creepy toy, and the family sleeping together in the living room.

The bite on girl’s shoulder reminded me of Paranormal Activity.

There are a lot of elements that straight up remind me of The Exorcist, however not in a we’re ripping this off way but in a paying homage way.

During the 1st interview scene, did you notice the mothers pose is identical to the mothers pose in the Exorcist. Then having a little girl playing with a Quija board alone, was also reminiscent of The Exorcist.

I noticed when I was making a replica of the portrait of the Nun, how much the she resembles Pazuzu from The Exorcist.

 

In my review of The Conjuring, I mentioned some shots that felt Kubrikesque. He did that in this too. The nun in the hallway felt like the Shining. There is also a shot of Janet looking out the window that is about the same as Jack in the Shining. Even down to the turtle neck.
The Marilyn Manson Nun Demon is getting her own spinoff movie. Which sounds cool, but I’ll reserve judgement because we all know how Annabelle turned out.

I thought that Joseph Bishara played her because I saw his name in the credits as the “Demon”. Plus he played the Lipstick-face Demon in Insidious, the witch Bathsheba in the Conjuring, and the basement demon in Annabelle.

He also composed the musical score on all of those movies as well as for The Other Side of the Door, The Vatican Tapes, Insidious 2 & 3, Grace: The Possession, Dark Sky’s etc.

However IMDb says the Demon Nun is played by Bonnie Aarons. So, then I thought Joseph Bishara was playing Bill Wilkins, who I thought of as a poltergeist. Nope! Bob Adrian played Bill Wilkins. So what Demon did Bishara play?

I did a little digging and found out that there was originally a horned demon played by Joseph Bashir, but they did reshoots and replaced him with the nun.

Speaking of casting, many people think that The Crooked Man was a CGI character, but he was played by Javier Botet, who also played Mama, the possessed La Niña Medeiros in REC, 3 different ghosts in Crimson Peak and the 4 armed creature Myrtu in The Other Side of the Door.

He is 6’7″ tall and weighs just over 100 lbs because he has Marfan Syndrome, which is also why he has elongated limbs and fingers.

I thought that they may have used some CGI to make his movements seem more nightmarish, but no. That was all Botet. He really can move in ways that are just amazing! I hope that there is a Crooked Man spinoff movie, or at least have Javier Botet play Slender Man.

This still was fun to watch a second time. This is definitely going to be one of those movies I have to watch every Halloween. There were several oh shit moments.

1 Oh shit – Old man
2 Oh shit – painting
3 Oh shit – the dog
4 Oh shit – crucifix room
5 Oh shit – Marilyn Manson Nun