‘Immaculate’: Sydney Sweeney’s Catholic Horror Movie Is Pure Nunsense
Maybe it’s best to begin at the end of Immaculate, the religious horror flick starring white-hot movie star, Euphoria‘s resident crying MVP and current savior of the rom-com Sydney Sweeney. You’ve likely heard about the last 10 minutes, even if you don’t know the plot surprises and spoilers regarding the who, what and why of it all. We’ll simply direct you to the photo above, in which our blood-smeared Lady of Perpetual Screamitude aims for the highest-decibel mark. By this point, Sweeney’s character — a chaste young American woman living at an Italian convent — has been to hell and back. She’s got one last task to perform. The camera stays locked in a tight close-up on her face, moving with her as she does what she has to do. Everything is focused on her reactions; even the backgrounds are a blur.
And Sweeney …well, let’s just say she 100-percent goes for it. The young actor has already proven that she’s got chops (see: Reality), and that long before she was gracing magazine covers and becoming gossip fodder, she’d honed a certain low-key style of performance in a slew of indie films. What we see here is a total zero-to-60 mph freakout. It’s not quite at the level of, say, Isabelle Adjani in Possession — still the gold standard for onscreen hysterical meltdowns — but the single-shot sequence is a testament to what happens when a performer fully commits to losing their shit. You can practically see the memes being conceived in real time. It’s a jaw-dropping climax. If only the rest of this messy midnight-movie mass was worthy of it.
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Sweeney’s Sister Cecilia has found her calling thanks to an accident on an icy lake back in Michigan, and she’s convinced she was saved because the Lord has some special purpose for her. (Asked why she has come halfway around the world to join the holy sisterhood, Cecilia replies, “Well, the parish near our hometown was closing, so….” Got it!) Her belief that she must get thee to a nunnery ASAP is steadfast. Our faith that she will be safe from harm is tempered somewhat by the film’s opening, however, in which we see a young woman (played by Simona Tabasco, one of hotel courtesans from The White Lotus‘ second season) attempt to escape the clutches of some evil looking Mother Superior-types and ends up being buried alive. Clearly, some sinister things are happening behind those sacred gates.
Once she settles in to her new Italian home, Cecilia quickly runs afoul of Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi), the head sister on campus. She also bonds with her roommate Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli), who has no problem dropping double entendres or sassing back the older nuns in charge. And then there’s Father Sal (álvaro Morte, a.k.a. the Professor from Money Heist), the kindly head priest who offers counsel as she adapts to life as a novitiate. Cecilia has been having some odd dreams, however. She also thinks she sees a gaggle of nuns wearing creepy red face masks lurking about. Every so often, she inexplicably vomits. “Too much Blood of Christ?” Sister Gwen asks.
Then, after one particularly intense nightmare involving confessional booths, endless hallways and grasping hands, Cecilia goes to the infirmary. She’s called into the Mother Superior’s office, where Father Sal and several other authorities want to speak to her. Has she been with a man, they inquire, either before or since coming to the convent? Of course not, Cecilia replies. Because, they tell her, you’re currently with child. It is a blessed miracle. Behold, the second coming of the Madonna!
By this point, Immaculate has been paying beaucoup homage to many of its grindhouse ancestors, from the Nunspoitation movies of the 1970s to Italy’s giddy, gory giallo with a more supernatural bent. Indeed, you would not be blamed for thinking that director Michael Mohan essentially waited until the witching hour, proceeded to watch the original Suspiria three times in a row, and then went, Right, I’ve got this now. And as for the gloriously Eurotrash score playing over every other scene of venomous nun-on-nun attacks and slow-dread strolls down shadowy passageways, Goblin may want to contact their lawyers.
Once Sister Cecilia gets the good news regarding her sexless conception and becomes both the object of worship (understandable) and envy (still a capital sin), the film tips more toward the Polanski-esque, with Rosemary’s Baby being a key influence …though not in the way you might think. Again, we don’t want to say too much, though we will note that there’s one whopper of an explanation that will very likely have you screaming “Holy Shit!”, and not necessarily in a good way.
It’s possible to view Immaculate in light of recent legislation concerning women’s autonomy over their bodies, and how religion has been used and abused to justify taking away human rights in that regard. It’s also totally understandable if an audience member simply wallows in the cheap thrill of seeing Catholic iconography given the creepy-vibe treatment and the erotic charge of someone rocking a wimple, if that’s your bag. This is a horror movie purposefully set up to court both types of viewers, and very much wants to have its communion wafer and eat it, too.
The only thing this second-rate scarefest truly succeeds in doing, however, is giving Sweeney a hell of a showcase. It’s already become part of the film’s backstory that Sweeney auditioned for this role a decade ago, the project was then consigned to purgatory, and the newly empowered star revived it and signed on as a producer. She knows a good Final Nun part when she reads one, and likely saw the chance to widen her range and/or open up an avenue into over-the-top genre movies. Immaculate is certainly blessed to have her. And when that last-gasp freakout finally comes, leaving you bug-eyed and jittery, you’ll thank your respective deities that at the very least, Sweeney has sacrificed all in the name of your guilty pleasures.
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