Binge-r #198: Warrior Nun + Relic
Sister Act: Alba Baptista (Ava Silva) in Warrior Nun
WARRIOR NUN S1
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: All 10 episodes now streaming
Given that I live in Melbourne, this was a good week for a distraction. Netflix’s new supernatural drama Warrior Nun has a title worthy of a vintage exploitation movie, a strong lacing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and enough straight-faced fantasy fixes to keep you occupied. It’s by no means great, but it has a pulpy effectiveness fostered by a swift sense of pacing and a supporting cast rigged for easily plotted friction. There are demons to be fought, but in this European co-production there’s also time to pause and debate whether given the first episode’s otherworldly revelations if The Exorcist is actually real.
Dead at the age of 19 after growing up in a Catholic orphanage in Spain, Ava Silva (Alba Baptista) is resurrected when a holy relic, the Halo, is embedded in her body after its previous host, the leader of a group of female warriors who serve in a secret Catholic order fighting evil, departs nearby in the opening sequence. Freed in ways she previously fantasised about, and given unstable superpowers, Ava is a second chance teenager pursued by both the sisters of the clandestine Order of the Cruciform Sword and the demons she soon discovers she can see with her own eyes. The aesthetic is lurid, complete with candle-lit crypts and hatchet-faced mother superiors, but it’s undercut by Ava’s interior monologue: “just keep talking, pretty boy,” she sighs after meeting – no kidding – J.C. (Emilio Sakraya) and his impossibly beautiful hipster grifter pals. Ava gets to train and glam up.
‘The Chosen One’ protagonist is a familiar one, and in Simon Barry’s liberal adaptation of Ben Dunn’s long-running graphic novel, Ava’s decisions are framed by her own self-loathing, barbed relationships with her fellow warrior nuns, and the Catholic Church as overseer, an organisation whose historic failings make it a suspect host for the martial women of the Order. Faith and agency bounce around the storylines, with the clash of purpose and pleasure delivered as an underpinning to neatly choreographed fight scenes. The show may hint that God has a plan for Ava, but Netflix obviously does. Warrior Nun satisfies the streaming giant’s algorithm, and just might be a filler for lockdown life.
Family Feud: Bella Heathcote (Sam) in Relic
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
RELIC (Stan, 2020, 89 minutes): There’s a haunted house in this sharply sketched new Australian horror film, but what manifests out of that possession is unexpected and resonant: abandonment guilt, the ravages of dementia, and the desperation to hold onto family memories. Co-written and directed, with a sense of regret that permeates both the slow burn opening and the shock cut finale, by Natalie Erika James, Relic follows a mother and her adult daughter, respectively Kay (Emily Mortimer) and Sam (Bella Heathcote), who belatedly travel to the rural home of Kay’s mother, Edna (Robyn Nevin), who locals fear has gone missing. The malevolent mould and uncertain creaks are one thing, but finding the absent matriarch only accentuates the worries of her offspring, and it’s the bond of blood between successive generations that motivates the unsettling tangle of circumstances that Kay and Sam increasingly find themselves facing. Capably orchestrated, the underlying themes and genre technique feed into each other, so that the scares linger as heartbreak.
New on Netflix: Directed by Tamra Davis, Billy Madison (1995, 85 minutes) is one of Adam Sandler’s most enjoyably dumb early comedies, as an entitled man-child who belatedly has to master primary school; Safe House (2012, 115 minutes) is a superior action-thriller where Denzel Washington’s veteran spy entangles Ryan Reynolds’ rookie in multiple reckonings.
New on SBS on Demand: A lesser sung 1970s conspiracy thriller, Capricorn One (1978, 114 minutes) stars Elliott Gould, James Brolin, and – yes – O.J. Simpson in a story of faked space missions and NASA malfeasance; rendering the fantastical as quiet desperation, Aloys (2016, 87 minutes) is a cerebral Swiss update of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation that follows a private eye who joins an underground consciousness hacking movement.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Stan’s brilliant English mockumentary comedy This Country and Netflix’s romantic comedy Top End Wedding.
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