The Nun II (2023)

In 1956, in the quiet Provençal town of Tarascon, altar boy Jacques carries out his chores under the watch of Father Noiret at the local parish. As Jacques descends to the lower level one afternoon he hears an abrupt crash; glass shatters somewhere above. He calls for Noiret and the priest and boy move together across the nave toward the altar. Without warning an unseen force grips Noiret, throws him upward, and engulfs him in flames. Jacques watches as Father Noiret is suspended and burned alive, the priest's body consumed before the terrified boy flees. After Jacques runs away, the demonic figure later identified by survivors as the monstrous nun appears in the church.

Four years later Sister Irene returns to active duty in a convent in Italy, still haunted by her previous confrontation with that same demonic nun. She has become part of a new community of sisters and forms a bond with a younger novice, Sister Debra, who bristles at rules and speaks openly about her reasons for joining the order. Debra tells Irene that her mother was killed in a racially motivated arson, a loss that motivates Debra's desire to combat evil. In a separate thread, Maurice -- known to friends as Frenchie -- is living and working at a boarding school near Tarascon. He patrols the grounds, helps the children, and develops a protective relationship with a young Irish pupil named Sophie and her mother Kate, who teaches at the school. Sophie is picked on by several classmates; Maurice intervenes repeatedly, earning the ire of the headmistress, Madame Laurent, who runs the institution with a strict hand and mourns her own son, Cédric.

A local boy making deliveries in the town is stalked by a presence in the evening and suddenly is lifted and held by the throat; the demonic nun appears and snaps the child's neck, killing him instantly. Word of Father Noiret's death and other inexplicable fatalities begins to surface across the region, and Sister Irene has a recurring dream in which Maurice appears to her as a tormented, possessed figure calling desperately for rescue. Church authorities summon Irene to Rome: Cardinal Conroy and a group of senior clerics assemble to brief her. They tell her that Father Noiret is dead and that several other church officials have been found dead under grotesque circumstances in different parts of Europe; they attribute the killings to the demon who had once manifested in the likeness of a nun. When Irene asks about Father Burke she is told he died of cholera. The cardinal asks Irene to investigate the resurgence of the demonic presence, but Irene initially refuses. After she wrestles privately with memories of her prior encounter and hears the gravity of the deaths, she accepts the mission. Debra insists on accompanying her and reveals her personal stake: she lost her mother to an act of racially fueled arson and wants to confront evil wherever it arises.

Irene and Debra travel to Tarascon. There they find Jacques, who offers them a rosary he took from Noiret out of fear on the night of the priest's death. Jacques slips away into crowds of boys, leaving the nuns to pursue the investigation. Irene and Debra visit the church where fragments of the violent episode remain, and they learn that Maurice was singled out by the demon during a previous encounter because he once saved Irene; the demon apparently marked him. The nuns then travel to Avignon to consult with scholars housed at the Palais des Papes. In the library they meet a solemn librarian who explains the demon's motives: the creature seeks a relic known as "the Eyes," the preserved eyes of Saint Lucy. The librarian recounts that Saint Lucy was a martyr during the Diocletianic persecutions; she was set on fire and survived immolation, but her eyes were removed. Her family later recovered them and kept them as holy relics. The librarian tells Irene and Debra that Valak--an angel turned dark or a demon associated with the nun-form--has been murdering descendants of Saint Lucy to reclaim the relic, and that the last known repository for the Eyes was at a monastery long ago, a site that later became a winery and now functions as the boarding school where Maurice works.

Back in Tarascon at night, Irene walks past a newspaper vendor. The magazines and papers at the stand flip their pages rapidly as if in a windless gust until the arrangement forms the image of the demonic nun. The lights in the square begin to flicker. Irene approaches and the manifested figure attacks her, driving her to the ground and leaving her unconscious in the street. Debra finds Irene and fetches medical assistance; while Irene recovers she confides to Debra fragmented memories of her own mother and the small moments she recalls before her mother's death.

At the boarding school Sophie continues to endure bullying. The girls lure her into the sealed-off chapel and force her to stare at an old stained-glass window depicting a goat. They taunt Sophie, saying that if she looks away the devil will take her. Sunlight slices through the stained glass and reflects as if the goat's eyes glow red. Panic grips Sophie as she sees a fleeting vision of the nun; the girls lock the chapel door, leave Sophie inside, and taunt one another until Maurice arrives. He finds Sophie trapped, forces the door and scolds the other girls, then walks Sophie home to her mother.

Night at the school brings increasing unrest. Maurice begins to sleepwalk and exhibit odd behavior; he senses a presence and occasionally hallucinates. Madame Laurent, investigating a disturbance in the sealed chapel after hearing Sophie's claim, walks alone into the dark. She sees the figure of Cédric -- her lost son -- walking the cloister and calling her name. The specter draws her deeper into the building and into the chapel. The demonic nun reveals herself and attacks; Madame Laurent is seized and killed by the demon. The headmistress's body is later found; the local people whisper that Valak murdered her.

Irene and Debra return to the boarding school to search the premises more thoroughly. They locate the spot indicated by the red reflection from the goat window: when the goat's eyes flare red they act as a pointer, as if laser-like, showing them where to dig. Debra and Irene use a flashlight to force the goat's stained glass to glow and follow the beam to a hidden place in the former monastery. There the nuns unearth the relic: a small sealed reliquary said to contain the preserved eyes of Saint Lucy. As Irene touches the relic, the static tension in the air snaps: the goat imagery on the window dissolves and the demonic force begins to take corporeal form. Maurice, already tormented and partially possessed, moves through the school under the demon's influence. The creature uses Maurice's body as a conduit, and Maurice follows Sophie into the bell tower. He attacks her there, his hands brutal against the child, and the violent struggle causes the bell tower's supports to fracture. The heavy bell and timbers give way; the tower collapses in a crash of stone and wood. The collapse destroys portions of the roof and scatters the children, but Sophie and the other girls escape physical death in the rubble even as terror overwhelms them.

Inside the wine cellar of the old monastery, where barrels line the walls, the demon advances. The demonic nun manifests and lifts Sister Irene into the air, then sets her ablaze in the same manner it burned Noiret, intent to incinerate her as well. Flames lick Irene's robes and skin, yet they fail to consume her. The librarian's earlier words echo in Irene's mind: she is a descendant of Saint Lucy and the power tied to the relic courses through her. Debra, frantic, joins Irene in confronting Maurice and the demon. The demon reaches through Maurice's seized body to take the Eyes from Irene and attempts to escape into full power; the demonic nun forces Maurice to snatch the reliquary and break its seal. At first it appears the ritual tears through Maurice: his body goes still as if dead when the relic's power assaults him. Irene watches her friend's body slump and mourns. Then Maurice springs back to violent life as the demonic nun draws fully from him and materializes in its monstrous nun form.

Debra and Irene react immediately. Irene, who has never been able to forget the prayers of the Mass, calls upon the Words of Institution and the sacramental formulas she knows. She and Debra begin to pray aloud, invoking the presence of Christ. Their vocal supplications coincide with physical phenomena in the cellar: the old barrelled wine seeping in the casks becomes viscous and shifts color. As the nuns pressure their prayers, the wine transubstantiates; it turns into the blood of Christ. The barrels swell and rupture under supernatural pressure. When they burst, the blood-soaked wine explodes across the chamber in a red deluge. The demonic nun recoils and shrieks as the sacramental blood drenches her form; the force of the consecrated liquid and the nuns' prayers push the demon back. The demonic nun is forced from Maurice's body and is flung, drenched and wounded by holy fluid, back toward the gateway from which it had arrived. The creature is banished; it vanishes in a sudden finality that pulls at the fabric of the room, and for a time the building falls quiet.

Maurice collapses, freed from possession but breathing and alive; he staggers to his feet and embraces Kate and Sophie, who rush to him in relief. Irene kneels, shaken and exhausted, surrounded by the smoking remnants of the burst casks and the decorative wreckage of the cellar. She watches Maurice walk with Kate and Sophie the next morning and feels a sharp worry at his side, sensing that the ordeal has left him marked despite his physical recovery. Debra stands by Irene, relieved but still uneasy, and the sisters depart the school as local authorities descend to catalog the damage and the bodies. Bodies found include Father Noiret, burned; the small delivery boy, whose neck shows violent trauma; Madame Laurent, found dead within the chapel after the spectral visitation; and several other clerics and laypeople reported across the diocese who were found murdered or in inexplicable states -- their deaths blamed by churchmen on the same demonic agent. Father Burke is recorded as deceased of cholera, a separate but noted loss to the community.

As the credits begin to roll, the film cuts to a quiet domestic scene in the United States. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren sit in their living room when the telephone rings. Father Gordon, voice urgent over the wire, contacts them to inform them of an ongoing haunting. The Warrens listen, and as the call continues their faces tighten with concern; the implication is clear that the battle against the demonic nun, and the mark on Maurice, will not end with the events at Tarascon. The scene closes with Ed and Lorraine preparing to answer the next call to confront the darkness that has resurfaced.

The ending of The Nun II is a final confrontation in the school chapel, where Sister Irene and Sister Debra stop Valak, free Maurice, and survive. Valak is driven back by prayer and holy power, and Maurice is no longer possessed by the end.

Irene and Debra reach the last battle after Valak has fully taken control of Maurice and is pursuing the relic tied to Saint Lucy. In the chapel beneath the school, the demon has the eyes of Saint Lucy and uses that power against Irene. Valak lifts Irene into the air and sets her on fire, but the flames do not consume her. In that moment, Irene realizes her own connection to Saint Lucy's line, and that keeps her alive through the attack.

Debra stays with Irene and prays with her as the situation reaches its peak. The school's old wine, stored because the building had once been a winery, spills across the room and is treated through prayer as the blood of Christ. The wine surges into a holy force, and when it meets Valak, the demon burns in a pillar of fire. The demon goat returns to the stained glass imagery, and Valak is forced back and destroyed in the moment of the rite.

Maurice is pulled free from Valak's grip during the climax. He screams as the demon is burned away, then comes back to himself once Irene and Debra keep praying over him. By the end of the scene, Maurice is alive and no longer possessed. The next morning, he is shown back at the school grounds, tending to a tomato plant, while Kate and Sophie are with him. Irene watches them from a distance as Maurice apologizes and appears to have found a place with them.

Sister Irene survives the battle and leaves with the knowledge that she is descended from Saint Lucy. Sister Debra also survives and remains with Irene through the end of the confrontation. Kate and Sophie survive the story and are still alive with Maurice at the school by the final morning. Valak is defeated in the immediate ending, but the film leaves a lingering sense of threat rather than complete finality.

Yes. The Nun II has a mid-credits scene, but no after-credits scene.

In the scene, the film cuts to the Warrens' home in Connecticut, where Ed and Lorraine Warren are shown answering a phone call from Father Gordon. Ed picks up, and the exchange is brief: Gordon is essentially calling them to take on another case, with the scene ending on that tease rather than revealing the full situation.

The scene is widely described as a bridge to the larger Conjuring timeline, and several sources note that it appears to be setting up the next Warren-centered chapter in the franchise.

Maurice, known as Frenchie, is revealed to be the demon's covert vessel: Valak has been riding within him since the events of the first film, using him to move unnoticed among humans and to reach the relic it wants. The movie treats his ordinary life at the boarding school as a tragic cover for the demon's ongoing influence over him.

Sister Irene is summoned because the Vatican links a chain of gruesome deaths across Europe to Valak and wants her to investigate after her earlier experience surviving the demon. She initially lives quietly in Italy, but the church asks her to travel to France and look into the murder in Tarascon and the wider pattern of attacks.

Valak is searching for a sacred relic associated with Saint Lucy, specifically the relic containing her eyes. The demon's goal is to obtain it because the story presents the relic as a source of divine power that would greatly strengthen Valak.

Sister Debra is a young novice who accompanies Sister Irene to France and serves as her key partner in the investigation. She is portrayed as more skeptical and rebellious than Irene, but she becomes crucial in the final confrontation by helping Irene resist Valak and by using Irene's blood to ignite the relic.

At the girls' boarding school in France, Maurice works there and befriends Kate, a teacher, and her daughter Sophie. Their relationship gives Maurice a more human, grounded life on the surface, even as the film reveals that he is secretly compromised by Valak's presence.

No--The Nun II is not family friendly. It is rated R for violent content and some terror, and multiple parent guides describe it as intense, frightening, and best avoided for children or sensitive viewers.

Potentially upsetting content includes: - Frequent jump scares and prolonged supernatural horror imagery. - Graphic violence and gore, including stabbings, impalements, burning, bludgeoning, neck-snapping, and bloody deaths. - Demonic and occult imagery, including frightening monsters and a demon nun. - Scenes involving children or young girls in danger, which may be especially distressing. - Disturbing references to suicide and death, plus shown images connected to hanging and self-harm history in the film's backstory. - Bullying and mean behavior among schoolgirls. - Mild language, with only limited profanity reported.

Sexual content appears to be absent, but the film is still considered highly unsuitable for young children because of its horror intensity and violent imagery. If you want, I can also give a kid-age suitability recommendation by age range.