There's a basement room where red light screams through slates in the walls, like Hell's fires blazing outside. The dormitory is monochromatic in blue night-shadows, with blazing orange light coming underneath the door. Yellow sun pours into a room hidden in dark blue shadows. The lighting design is specific and controlled. The camera floats through the rooms, swooping in fluid motions around corners, up the stairs, circling back down and around. Since the film rarely leaves the house, they utilize every space to its fullest capacity.

Bousman and director of photography Joseph White pull out all the stops. When black-habited nuns stand guard holding sniper rifles, ready to kill anyone who tries to leave, you know you're through the looking glass. But in the second half (almost too late), when Mary devises a plan to break out, the film finds its sea legs, and the terror, torture and desperation builds its own crazy momentum. The repetition gives the film a deadened quality. Agatha' includes scene after scene of Mother Superior's torture techniques. Slow-paced at first, with flashbacks showing Mary's life before, her drunk dad, her grifter boyfriend (Justin Miles), 'St. Agatha'-particularly the opening-which are imitative of Zack Snyder's 'Sucker Punch,' but without the its propulsive, manipulative force. Some of them disappear from the dormitory at night, never to be seen again.īousman made his name with the 'Saw' series, and knows his way around horror and gore. When the girls 'misbehave', Mother Superior's punishment is vicious. They live in terror of Mother Superior (who can blame them?) Scary things are seen through slats in the wall, underneath doors. The girls are not allowed to talk to each other. Scratching sounds come from the upper floor, as though someone is trapped up there.

Flee, Mary, flee!įrom moment one, things are strange. She confides in Mary that 'Rome' cut off the convent's funding since they didn't 'approve' of her methods. Once inside, she is greeted by Paula ( Trin Miller), a solemn woman with a scar across her face, who takes her to the Mother Superior ( Carolyn Hennesy), whose silky voice, dyed red hair peeking out from under her wimple, and seething subtext of sexuality and control makes an alarming impression. The convent is a dilapidated white building, clapboard walls and rickety cupola on top, a grey statue brooding in front.

There are ominous clues all around Mary on her initial approach, like a huge bear trap, spiked jaws open, in the middle of the path.

A young pregnant woman named, appropriately, Mary ( Sabrina Kern) is transported to a home for unwed mothers, run by nuns, and hidden in a misty forest.

The Convent Horror by L.J. King