Sister Death Explained- Does Veronica’s Prequel Set Up Sister Narcise As Evil?

Religious horror is especially frightening to many people. For some, it is the idea that for all the good, there must be just as much bad. If you believe in God, you must believe in the Devil. That’s troubling when you consider all the power the evil deity supposedly wields. Humans are fragile, vulnerable, and corruptible. In other words, they are easy targets. Supernatural horror is about the unknown. It is beyond natural and defies logic. How can you fight what you can not see and understand? Sister Death couches itself nicely in that space, neither answering all your questions nor leaving too much unanswered.

Since the Catholic Church began performing exorcisms, it positioned itself as the defacto experts and witnesses on possession and evil. Unfortunately, the church has its own troubled past to answer for, and that intersection between what is beyond reality and what is simple human frailty is where some of the best religious horror comes from.

Additionally, the Catholic Church doesn’t have a stellar past when it comes to young charges and abuse. Everything from sexual assault to the hideous abuse inflicted on unwed mothers in Magdalene Laundries paints a nasty picture of power imbalances and all too human evil. Films like Jena Malone’s trippy Consecration, The Nun films from the Conjuring Universe, and The Devil’s Doorway have been successful ventures into those troubled places. There is something deeply disturbing about seeing what should be the purest twisted and warped into something monstrous.

One of Netflix’s most successful horror movies of the last ten years was Veronica, a possession story based on the real life and death of Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro. The girl really existed, but the story took on a life of its own and has become a powerful urban legend, changing and growing with each storyteller. The teenager is rumored to be haunted and tortured until she dies. In the years since her death, her family has been plagued by the same shadowy creatures. How much is true and how much is fabrication is debatable, but the film was a decent adaptation of the urban myth. Now, six years later, the creepy nun from Veronica, Sister Death, gets an origin story.

One of the ways Sister Death succeeds is its willingness to use history and location to do the heavy lifting. The convent the film takes place in is full of overly bright and stark walls and shadowy corners. This is a set that is ready-made for a horror movie. Bleached-out whites, pops of jewel tones, and blueish grays fill the screen. The church’s dark history speaks for itself.

In Veronica, Sister Death, as she is so not so lovingly called, is a nun teaching in the school where Veronica brings her Ouija board. Sister Narcise claims she is blind because she damaged her eyes so she would not have to see such dark things anymore. In Sister Death, her eyes are damaged as a result of staring at the eclipse. Why she lies could be a simple continuity issue between the movies or might hint at something far creepier.

Although sarcastic and cold in Veronica, Sister Narcise looks like she is trying to help. She tried to stop Veronica from playing with the Ouija board by destroying it, but unfortunately, it appears when she broke the board, it released the spirit of whoever or whatever was waiting to communicate with Veronica. As a result, she may have unbound the very evil that she was hoping to protect Veronica from.

A more interesting and disturbing explanation is Sister Narcise is being manipulated by an evil force or purposefully unleashed the entity. All throughout Sister Death, Narcise worries that she is not worthy of the town’s worship or becoming a nun. She questions her faith and her beliefs. Something dark invades her mind and dreams. Maybe whatever ability allows her to see these terrible events draws other evil things to her, and eventually, something takes over.

We first meet Sister Death as a young child in 1939. Sister Death was once an optimistic young girl named Narcisa. Something happened in her small village that made all the townsfolk believe she was touched by God. She seems to be able to see things that others can not. Now, as a young woman, she has become a novice but questions her beliefs and abilities. She comes to a convent to teach the young girls who live there.

Almost immediately, she questions what happened to her as a child and whether she really belongs there. Her crisis of conscience isn’t helped when strange things begin happening, like chairs falling over for no reason and terrible visions start invading her dreams and later her waking hours. She is on the verge of becoming a nun and unhinged. It’s not a great combination.

Her visions are caused by Sister Socorro, who was raped during the Spanish Civil War. The Mother Superior and Mother Julia chose to cover up the rape, pregnancy, and subsequent child. When Sister Socorro’s child became very ill, she wanted to take her to the hospital, but the nuns were afraid their secret would get out, so they locked Sister Socorro in her room and tried to treat the sick girl with a cold bath. The girl fought them and was accidentally killed when she hit her head on the edge of the tub. Since 1936, when this happened, the convent and school have been haunted by the girl and her mother. This is what the students have been seeing and likely what killed Sister Inez. She supposedly left the convent, but this is probably a lie told to keep the convent’s secrets.

By the time Narcise arrives at the convent, Mother Superior and Sister Julia are the only ones left who know what happened. The school and convent have been haunted for over a decade, and the sisters are desperate. Believing she is a holy person, they think she is the answer to their prayers. It is entirely possible, however, that she is a magnet for evil. She sees what others cannot because evil wants her to see. The creepy collection of eyes that stare back at her in the confessional booth lends support for the theory that the eyes are the window to the soul, and Sister Narcise may have waited too long to protect hers. In Veronica, she claims she blinded herself to stop seeing the shadows, but in Sister Death, her eyes are damaged by the eclipse. It’s a peculiar thing to lie about.

After releasing Sister Socorro in 1936, she is able to get revenge on Mother Superior and Sister Julia in what appears to be the past and present simultaneously. A karmic comeuppance that takes place in two timelines at once. Although what happened to Sister Socorro was horrible, revenge is generally not accepted as a righteous act of a godly person. This makes it even more plausible that her closeness to evil changed her, and by the time we we her in Veronica, Sister Death is more concerned with letting things out than keeping things in. It would certainly add a new layer to the already complex story and establish a lot of territory for spin-offs, additional prequels, and sequels.