Stories of haunted horror movies sets have their own subgenre in the arena of Urban Legends. Tales of demonic torments on The Exorcist and Poltergeist are especially mythical. So, it might not come as too much of a surprise to hear director Corin Hardy felts some potentially supernatural energy on the set of The Nun, produced last winter. When you’re shooting at an actual castle near Count Dracula’s homeland, however, the shivers suddenly become contagious.
As The Nun marches towards its September 7th release date, Hardy is getting mileage out of tales of paranormal happenings during production. Check out what he told the folks at Cinema Blend. If you can’t stream, we’ve pulled the best excerpts below the video.
“We were shooting in a real Romanian fortress… it was used to store weapons… like an old bunker. Everyone was a bit unnerved by it. Pitch dark tunnels you could get lost in. So when we shot this sequence… it was called the corridor of crosses, and it was a two hundred foot long corridor… deep, dark, dank. Where I was situated, I had to be out of camera shot, so I was in one of these cells… literally a door from the corridor into a pitch-black room. I see these two guys from the crew, probably sound department, just sort of sitting back a little further in the dark. I said hi. I was focused on the film. I turned my back and sat with my back to these two guys. And I was watching the monitors. Half an hour later… I finally got the shot… I got up and turned to the two men and said, ‘Did you see that?’ And I turned around and… there was just no one in the room. And there hadn’t been anyone in there at all. There’s nowhere they could’ve come out of. I saw them on the way in. I just felt that they were there the whole time. I can only assume that they were probably like Romanian soldiers…. watching over the filming of The Nun.”
Give the trailer and synopsis for The Nun a look-see below.
Synopsis:
When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together, they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of a demonic nun.
The Nun stars Taissa Farmiga, Bonnie Aarons, Charlotte Hope; Hardy directed from a script penned by Gary Dauberman and James Wan.
Words: Josh Millican (@josh_millican)
