With “The Nun II,” it is now apparent that Sister Irene is the James Bond of nuns. Bring on the franchise.

The formula has the humble young nun toiling away in servitude at some remote abbey, this time in Italy, when a powerful cardinal from the Vatican suddenly shows up. There have been unexplained deaths, you see, in abbeys across Europe. They form a geographical progression originating from an abbey in Romania from 2018’s“The Nun.”

That can only mean one thing: The demon Valak (Bonnie Aarons) is back. Sister Irene’s mission — and there is no “should you decide to accept it” about it — is to track down and vanquish the demon, using whatever means necessary. Her only “gadgets” are her paranormal skills and visions.

The “Nun” movies, set in the 1950s, are an offshoot of“The Conjuring”series, in whichPatrick WilsonandVera Farmigastar as real-life 1970s paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, most famous for “The Amityville Horror.” The original “The Nun” was a prequel inspired by Valak’s appearance in“The Conjuring 2”(2016).

The masterstroke of casting is Taissa Farmiga (“American Horror Story”and HBO’s“The Gilded Age”), Vera’s younger sibling, as Sister Irene. She has wide-eyed appeal, like a young Shelley Duvall, and approaches the role with a cunning hesitancy, calculating and gathering information like a gunslinger waiting for her opponent to draw first.

“The Nun II,” a notable improvement on the first film, is mainly set in France, where Sister Irene, accompanied by can-do novitiate Sister Debra (Storm Reid of“Missing”and“A Wrinkle in Time”), tracks down Valak at a girls boarding school, where she finds Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), her ally from “The Nun.” Other allies include Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey), a student, and Kate (Anna Popplewell), Sophie’s mother and a teacher at the school.

像第一部电影,”修女II”是滴着atmosphere. It was filmed mostly in the South of France, at actual historic abbeys. The main setting, the boarding school, was filmed at Couvent des Prêcheurs, a 13th century former convent in Aix-en-Provence.

Directed with a refreshing languidness by Michael Chaves (“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”and“The Curse of La Llorona”) and lensed with a dark richness by cinematographer Tristan Nyby, “The Nun II” has some interesting ideas and some thrilling sequences, including one banger where Sister Irene, standing in front of an old-fashioned newsstand, gleans an important clue from a paranormal spinning of magazine pages.

The only element keeping the film from greatness is the screenplay by Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing, which has characters with heart but lacks the wonder of its religious underpinnings that could have elevated the material. This is, after all, a battle of good and evil in which the main tool is faith.

Otherwise, the plucky Sister Irene would be at home in a 1940s Val Lewton horror movie, a heroine who instinctively runs toward danger instead of away from it.

She awaits her next mission.

Reach G. Allen Johnson:ajohnson@sfchronicle.com