The Convent (Review)

The easiest way for me to describe The Convent is Night of The Demons/Night of The Demons 2 but a lot less fun. The film literally reads like a Night of The Demons rip off. All you need to do is sub-out certain words/names and it all makes sense. Take out abandoned house “Hull House,” and replace it with abandoned convent. Take out youths throwing a party on Halloween, and replace it with youths throwing a party during rush week. Take out Jennifer Rhodes, and replace her with Adrienne Barbeau. Again, The Convent appears like a rip off of a classic film, but has half the quality. Night of The Demon came out in 1988 and 1994 and The Convent came out in 2000, by the way.

Anyway, with all that said, you kind of already know the plot of The Convent. The only difference from the other movies I mentioned is the urban legend that surrounded the abandoned nun-ery. According to legend, the convent also served as a home and school for troubled young girls. One girl became pregnant at 16-years-old and was literally forced (and I mean strapped down and drugged) to have an abortion. After she regained her health, the young woman murdered all the nuns and priest, set the place on fire, and disappeared. So, of course, this spot is a local hang out for the college kids who inhabit the town. On this night, however, a cult has also broken into the convent and have awakened the spirits of the damned. The souls of demons possess each individual that dies there and now the group of evil monsters have a particular goal in mind.

The Convent is written by Chaton Anderson, directed by Mike Mendez (The Gravedancers), and stars Joanna Canton (“That 70’s Show”) and scream queen Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog), with cameos by scream queen Bill Mosely (The Devil’s Rejects) and rapper Coolio.

I think the two only highlights in this film is the opening scene where a “Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction” type character beats nuns and a priest with a baseball bat before shooting them all with a shotgun and lighting them on fire. Definitely not something you see every day, even in horror. The other highlight is the cool special FX make up the team behind the movie used – it lights up with a black light so it gave them a cool monster effect without any cheesy CGI. Besides those two points, there is nothing redeemable or good about this movie. None of the characters were likable. The acting was either slightly below average or way over acted. The sound effects were clearly taken from a sound library somewhere and didn’t really fit in, in terms of actuality. And not a lot of attention was played to detail as a single molotov cocktail was enough to make the whole three-winged convent explode.

The title is available On Demand on FEARnet so it’s free… Thank god I didn’t waste any money on this movie!