"The Director of The Nun II Reveals One Scene That Nearly Drove Him to the Edge: 'It Was a Monstrous Challenge'"

 "The Director of The Nun II Reveals One Scene That Nearly Drove Him to the Edge: 'It Was a Monstrous Challenge'"

Director Michael Chaves talks about the scary newspaper stand scene in the trailer of The Nun II.

The director of the upcoming horror movie, The Nun II, faced a tough challenge in creating a scary scene that would really spook the audience. Michael Chaves, who previously directed The Curse of La Llorona and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, returned for his third film in the successful Conjuring series. In an interview with Collider, he talked about his experience and the scene that was particularly challenging. Since the release of the film's first trailer, one scene has been getting a lot of attention: the newspaper stand scene.

In this creepy moment, Sister Irene is at a magazine stand when suddenly, the pages start flipping by themselves in a gust of wind. This builds up to a life-size image of the terrifying nun, Valak, appearing to frighten the audience. Chaves explained that even though they came up with the idea for this scene early on, actually bringing it to life was a long and difficult process. He said, "It was the first thing I started working on and the last thing I finished. That scene was really tough, and it almost wore me out. [Laughs] I didn't think one scene could be so challenging, but it was really tough."

Minimal VFX Used in This Scene

One of the reasons behind the challenging filming process was that they mainly used real cameras and didn't rely much on computer effects afterward. The director wanted to have a scene where the Nun appears in a newsstand. They had an idea to make it look like the magazines in the newsstand were like flip books, and somehow, they all came together to form a collage. Everyone wondered how they could pull it off. The director simply said, "Let's do it all with real cameras."

The director also mentioned that making the magazines flip was quite a challenge. They had to print the magazines, use wind to help turn the pages, and set up mechanical systems to make the pages flip at the right times. "And that got us about halfway there. But then, some of the mechanical parts started to break, and we were filming at night. It felt like everything was falling apart. We thought, 'This will never work!'"

The Nun II takes place four years after the first film. It follows Sister Irene, played by Taissa Farmiga, as she has to deal with her past when the evil nun Valak, played by Bonnie Aarons, comes back to haunt her. When a priest is murdered, and dark forces are unleashed, Sister Irene and Sister Debra, played by Storm Reid, find themselves at an all-girls boarding school.

The Nun II is scheduled to be released in theaters on September 8.