As it closes in on 100 years since the Spanish Civil War, Spanish cinema is still debating the conflict, its lasting scars and the Catholic Church’s role in it — as victim of “leftist” reprisals, or as an authoritarian religion aligned with other authoritarians — fascists, monarchists and the like.

“Sister Death” is an interesting Civil War-related attempt at back-engineering a prequel to the teen-haunted-by-a-nun thriller, Paco Plaza’s “Veronica.”

That 2017 film, set in 1991, was about a spectral “Hermana Muerte” (“Sister Death”) who pursued the title character after a seance. The new film tells us what a nun who came to teach at Veronica’s school went through after the Spanish Civil War, and what she finds out happened at a convent school during that cataclysm.

“Sister Death” is a mash-up of horror tropes trotted out in many other films — a triggering solar ecclipse, scary nuns, an over-matched noviciate, symbolic game of “hangman” and a child tormented by “the girl,” with the student’s hair as a singular source of vulnerability.

As a stand-alone film, it’s moody and spooky, if a bit hard to follow. It’s ambitious in the way it wades into the Civil War and its violence, and clumsy in its attempts to tie itself into “Veronica.”

But those recycled tropes have a little less sting than they might. The frights are too often of the “It was only a nightmare” variety.

An extraordinary event near the end of the Civil War turns a little girl in a remote mountain village into a “miracle child,” one with visions of the Virgin Mary. Ten years later (1949ish), the child is the 20ish Sister Narcissa (Aria Bedmar), a novice clothed in white ready to teach the students at a convent school with a troubled past.

The girls boarded there labor in the convent’s laundry, a Catholic scandal in some countries, and are easily rattled by the callous Sister Julia (Maru Valdivielso), a martinet singularly unimpressed by Narcissa’s “Miracle Girl” past.

But Mother Superior (Luisa Merelas) is a fan. So Narcissa has a job and her work cut out for her, winning over and teaching her students in the face of strange, supernatural goings-on and a climate of fear that the girls develop over “The Girl,” an apparition they’ve heard of and start seeing for themselves.

Little Rosa (Sara Roch) becomes the spectre’s target.

Sister Narcissa starts to piece together a dark secret the place is keeping, one about a long dead Sister Socorro, and how that might (supernaturally) “explain” what’s happening.

Spanish TV actress Bedmar does a decent job of suggesting realistic human reactions to experiencing the extraordinary. It’s a more nuanced performance than is common in horror, partly explained by Sister Narcissa’s past. As a child, she was exposed to “miracles.” So the supernatural threat here is terrifying, but taken at face value.

The effects are modest and get the job done — characters “floating” on a dolly into a shot, a simple novice’s veil and habit that attack the young nun wearing them.

But it’s all too familiar to be very frightening in the wake of so many “Scary Nun” stories. And the Spanish Civil War flashbacks, which Narcissa “experiences” in dreams or hallucinations, are both graphic and murky in who caused what and why that created a Monster Nun Ghost seeking vengeance.

Connecting all of it to “Veronica” seems more cute than necessary or useful.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, sexual assault, suicide

Cast: Aria Bedmar, Maru Valdivielso, Luisa Merelas, Sara Roch,
Chelo Vivares and Sandra Escacena.

Credits: Directed by Paco Plaza, scripted by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Paco Plaza. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31