The Convent is a relatively entertaining and extremely low budget B-Movie, that desperately wants to be Evil Dead but misses the mark. It was released in 2000 straight to video, and has gained a small cult following.
The film opens with a flashback to the 1950s, where a teenage girl stylishly shoots up the Convent, in the best display of mass um.. clergyside since, well, ever I guess. If anyone knows of another film that features multiple nuns and priests getting shot, so I can compare, let me know. Those of you who might be offended by members of the clergy being brutally murdered needn't worry though, these nuns were possessed by demons, and performed an abortion on the gun-woman for reasons unknown, so they kind of deserved it.
Following the story of a bunch of hapless teenagers, including but certainly not limited to, a pretentious Goth, a reformed Goth cum Jock, an annoying cheerleader, and a desperate virgin, the film truly runs the gamut of horror movie cliches. Our heroes, through a series of ridiculously bad, though thoroughly predictable, horror movie judgement calls, end up on the run from the aforementioned demonic zombie-nuns (You didn't think they'd actually stay dead, did you?). As you can imagine with such subject matter, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and, as such, it is clear that the cliches are mostly intentional. In fact, I found them to be amusing for the first 20 minutes or so, but they quickly become tiresome as the film progresses. The wannabe Satan worshippers, who gave me SNL "Goth Talk" flashbacks, are one of two legitimately funny parts of the film. Coolio makes an amusing cameo appearance in the second funny moment, but by and large the film strains for laughter, and more often than not, comes off as unintentionally hilarious at inappropriate moments.
Adrienne Barbeau also makes a cameo appearance as the older, slightly more insane version of our teenage nun-killer. Horror fans will no doubt recognize her from a number of John Carpenter flicks from the early 80s, including The Fog. Unfortunately she has little to do here, and I think the film could have benefited from exploring her character more, or at least giving her more screen time to do some ass-kicking.
The jaw dropping make-up and gore effects of the equally low budget (but far superior) Evil Dead are nowhere to be found, and in general, the special effects work in this film is quite sloppy. Some of the gore effects are clever, but the zombies look like people with some makeup, stuck under black light, while having some sort of seizure. The end of the film also features perhaps one of the worst attempts at a special effects that I've seen in recent memory.
All in all, this is not a film that I would want to watch again by myself, but it's still worth seeing, especially with a group of friends for bad movie night. After all, how many spastic zombie nuns does one get to see in the movies today?
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