Editorials
[Editorial] Can We Talk About the Bizarre Casting of Taissa Farmiga in ‘The Nun’?
On paper, the casting of Taissa Farmiga in Corin Hardy’s The Nun was a fun and perhaps even inspired choice, as Taissa’s sister Vera Farmiga is of course synonymous with The Conjuring Universe, starring in the main series of films as the real life Lorraine Warren. In execution, however, it has proven to be one of the strangest casting decisions in recent years.
Obviously, this article will contain spoilers for The Nun, so feel free to turn away now. Also, this is not a review of the film, but if you’d like to read ours, Scott Weinberg has ya covered.
To make one thing perfectly clear right off the bat, I am personally a big fan of Taissa Farmiga, an incredibly talented young actress who has been killing it in the horror genre. Farmiga, in many ways, is a modern day “scream queen,” a frequent star of “American Horror Story” who turned in perhaps her best genre performance in 2015’s horror-comedy, The Final Girls.
Taissa Farmiga is great. I love Taissa Farmiga.
Now here’s the problem. In The Nun, Taissa Farmiga plays Sister Irene, who for much of the film has not yet actually committed to being a nun. Over the course of the film, we learn that Sister Irene has paranormal super-powers, so to speak, as her whole life she’s had visions that eventually allow her to overcome the evil entity Valak in Romania, in 1952.
Yes, The Nun is set in 1952, twenty years before the events of The Conjuring. And Taissa Farmiga is exactly twenty years younger than her older sister, Vera Farmiga. And yet, The Nun‘s biggest twist is that there’s not actually a final act twist at all. Somehow, Taissa Farmiga’s Sister Irene does not actually grow up to become Vera Farmiga’s Lorraine Warren.
The Nun‘s connection to The Conjuring films, instead, is far less compelling, with the final moments of Corin Hardy’s film taking us directly into a scene from The Conjuring; it’s in those final moments that we learn that a character from The Nun was actually the same man featured in footage Ed and Lorraine Warren showed off to a classroom in The Conjuring.
It was a possessed Maurice (aka “Frenchie”) who introduced Lorraine to Valak.
So why then was Taissa Farmiga cast to play Sister Irene in The Nun, a character that ends up having no connection whatsoever to her sister’s Lorraine Warren? It’s a downright befuddling choice, to say the very least, as Taissa Farmiga and Vera Farmiga look *so much* alike. Taissa is a dead ringer for a young Vera, and the film’s timeline works out perfectly for Sister Irene to have eventually moved away from being a nun and into being a demon-fighting hero. And again, Sister Irene and Lorraine Warren even have the same set of supernatural skills.
Essentially, the film seems to be working overtime to set up Irene being Lorraine, or at least a relative, but then nothing ever comes of the seemingly obvious connection. It’s not just a huge missed opportunity, but also a hugely confusing aspect of The Nun. Literally *any* actor could’ve been cast to play Irene, so why Vera’s doppelganger if it means absolutely nothing?
The decision is especially confusing because The Nun actually does jump ahead 20 years in its final moments, from Taissa to Vera. And yet, there’s weirdly no link between the two. If you left the theater wondering whether the film had poorly conveyed to you that Irene and Lorraine are the same person, well, just know that you weren’t alone in being incredibly confused.
Granted, the real life Lorraine Warren never spent any time in her youth as a nun, but when have horror movies ever been beholden to reality? The Nun easily could’ve had a compelling connection to the core Conjuring films, showing us a young Lorraine’s very first battle with Valak. By not featuring that twist, the film’s casting instead muddies its own waters.
A real horror head-scratcher, this one.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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