Agnes (Movie)

In this plodding horror-drama from Mickey Reece, a possessed nun drives one of her sisters to leave their convent.The art house fascination with nuns is hardly new: Jacques Rivette’s vibrant drama “The Nun” made waves in the 1960s; Jeff Baena’s “The Little Hours” lampooned medieval Catholicism in 2017. Theaters have again opened their arms to nunsploitation this month with “Benedetta,” Paul Verhoeven’s latest shocker, and now “Agnes,” from the wildly prolific director Mickey Reece — it’s his 18th feature film to come out in the last 10 years.Unfortunately for Reece, quantity is no indicator of quality; this choppy film has little to say, particularly about cloistered women, despite being named after a possessed sister and dedicating a plotline to an ex-nun.Though “Agnes” opens during a Mass in the convent before introducing its titular character (Hayley McFarland) — a satanic sister who reveals her wickedness by cursing and levitating teacups — it quickly centers the religious men tasked with exorcising Agnes. Men like the jaded Father Donaghue (Ben Hall), who is soon to be relocated to some faraway country after being accused of child molestation. He warns Benjamin (Jake Horowitz), a priest-in-training just shy of taking his vows, against the lifestyle.The second act focuses on Agnes’s friend, Mary (Molly C. Quinn), after she leaves the convent. As she navigates normal life, she connects with Agnes’s former lover, a comedian named Paul Satchimo (Sean Gunn).If that all sounds confusing and pointless, that’s because it mostly is. There is a clear through line of faithlessness in the script by Reece and John Selvidge, but it is otherwise so aimless and underdeveloped as to turn this 93-minute film into a plodding slog. (If you’re expecting to learn anything substantial about Agnes herself, for instance, you won’t.) Couple that with erratic editing and endless horror clichés and you have a boring movie that, like its titular character, causes some bloodshed but for the most part does absolutely nothing at all.AgnesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More