If one comes across this title and commits to watching, there's one thing to squarely keep in mind. The only, crystal-clear intent with 'Sister Wrath,' also known as 'Nun of that,' was to tell a ridiculous, over the top story in a way that was as ridiculous and over the top as was possible. The movie immediately feels like a cheeky idea a college kid had after watching Adult Swim for many hours, and on a lark they somehow scrabbled together the cash and the contacts to pursue the production on a level one split hair above 100% amateurism. These nuns just want to have fun (alongside everyone else involved).
That's the one definite truth about this movie. In addition, I would argue that there are dashes of cleverness sprinkled throughout, some good ideas that allow some happy little neurons to fire off as we watch. Still - all the most open-minded generosity one could muster will only extend so far. It's so easy to meaningfully criticize every last element of 'Sister Wrath' that one wonders if the effort would really be worth it. Writing, direction, acting, effects, production design, art direction, and all other work behind the scenes and in front of the camera are at once overcooked and underwhelming. They build absolute inauthenticity, and so heavily pervade the feature that all 90 minutes operate at an 11 on a dial that only goes to 10; with no sense of dynamics, the result is flat and dull. Moreover, a preponderance of the dialogue and irreverent would-be humor is hopelessly juvenile and pointlessly raunchy, aiming for cheap laughs over real wit. This is to say nothing of a screenplay that plays fast, loose, and questionably with religion and culture, employs misogyny, racism, and homophobia, and makes light of child molestation in the Catholic Church. Some of this is instilled to a fraction of a degree better than abject mockery and punching down, but that's not saying much.
All this may still earn a passing grade if the writing and direction weren't so forced and contrived at large, if there were greater care put into realizing the picture even on a meager budget, or if there were more balance between the action and the comedy. Yet where bombastic action has made similar flicks a total blast (see 2010's 'Nude nuns with big guns,' which I for one loved), there's too little of it here to make a dent, and it's not as convincing where it does present. Where the humor is concerned one could at best argue that 'Sister Wrath' is trying to be a third- or fourth-tier distantly-related knock-off of 'The Hebrew Hammer,' but again - it's just not funny. That leaves very little for the curious viewer to really latch onto. To whatever extent this feature can claim to have been an earnest endeavor to be ludicrous entertainment, and to whatever far smaller extent it actually does provide some, as a whole it's simply not satisfactory.
The cast do what they can with weak material and lacking direction, but it's not much. Crew behind the scenes contribute what they can within the limits of a production that feels roughly equivalent to an Uncork'd film, but they alone can't overcome the deficiencies. 'Sister Wrath' only wants to have fun, but it's so consistently boorish and overdone - frankly, in all the wrong places - that the enjoyment isn't particularly passed onto the audience. I commend the work put into it, but above all director Richard Griffin, and co-writer Ted Marr, just didn't seem to have the skills to make this the more robust romp it could have been. I can only assume they've developed their craft in the time since, but 'Sister Wrath' just doesn't cut it. "Nun of that," indeed.
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