Immaculate is Neon’s latest horror flick, and it stars the current It Girl, Sydney Sweeney, as a young nun who accepts a position at a secluded convent in Italy. While there, she mysteriously becomes pregnant, despite being a virgin, and, hence the title, soon the convent becomes convinced she’s carrying the resurrection of Christ.
Because, you know, it’s a horror movie. However, something much more sinister might be happening. Oh, yeah, that’s right, it is a horror movie, so let’s replace might with is definitely happening. So, for much of its running time, Immaculate is a decent throwback to Dario Argento style Italian horror movies, with it getting a lot of mileage out of its picturesque Italian scenery and cast of old pro actors from the region.
It’s a slow burn and not particularly scary. But it all builds up to an incredibly strong final scene, which is good enough that it really makes the entire film worth seeing just for that superb payoff. Too bad, then, that the 80 minute build up to the dazzling final sequence is such a mixed bag, with it really feeling like the writer, Andrew Lobel, and director, Michael Mohan, conceived of the final scene on its own and had to figure out a way to build a movie around it.
The whole film kind of feels like a bit of an afterthought where it’s building up to a final scene that, you know, of course is probably gonna inspire a whole lot of talk about how provocative it is and, sure enough, it is something. As such, Immaculate is, for most of its running time, little more than a passable horror flick, although it’s distinguished by its excellent cinematography from Alicia Christian and a terrific lead performance from Sydney Sweeney.
Now, some may raise their eyebrows at the last part, but the fact is she’s always been quite a good actress. Her acting on Euphoria has always been powerful, and she was great in The White Lotus and terrific in the little seen HBO movie Reality. Anyone but you? Eh, I didn’t care for it, but it made a lot of money.
And Madame Web? I mean, are we really going to blame Sidney Sweeney for Madame Web? I don’t think so. Yet, it does feel that when we’re talking about how good of an actress she is, people are kind of distracted by her rather, let’s say, undeniable talents. Yes. And the movie uses this aspect to its advantage, I have to say.
There are a whole lot of scenes where Sidney Sweeney is bathing with a see through white t shirt or robe, and yeah, I mean, the movie definitely knows that she’s great looking and that the audience that comes to see it is gonna wanna probably see her unclothed to a certain extent. Although the movie never quite goes into full nunsploitation territory, or even get as wild and out there as Ken Russell’s The Devils, where the nuns are all sex crazed and insane.
No, it stays relatively classy, but, you know, it does know that people are very attracted to her and it uses it to its advantage. And indeed, Sister Cecilia is supposed to be rather unlikely a nun, with the Italian authorities at customs drooling over her and her fellow nuns looking at her with disbelief when she walks into the remote church.
Yet Sweeney is able to evoke the character’s conviction and unshakable faith pretty perfectly, and the film wouldn’t work as well as it does without her. Of course, though, it all builds up to that amazing final scene, which seems to have been partly inspired by Andrzej Zulawski’s classic Possession, a completely insane movie that many of you may not have seen, but boy, you should check it out.
Sidney Sweeney kind of evokes this famous scene in the movie where Isabella Gianni has this kind of complete breakdown in a Paris metro. So this happens in the Italian countryside, and it’s all done in this one unbroken shot, and it ends the film on such a wild note that it becomes understandable Why this is a Neon release rather than a mainstream studio one, as the finale is pretty crazy and would have never, ever made it past the room full of executives.
This is definitely not PG 13 horror folks. This is hard R. Director Michael Mohan deserves credit for letting the finale play out the way it did. It does. But again, there’s a lot of movie to get through before it finally happens, and the rest of the film just isn’t as compelling. For one thing, it’s not especially scary despite some good gore and a brutal sequence where someone loses a tongue.
It’s heavy on atmosphere in a way that pays homage to Argento, but it still could have used a couple of grind gingo moments earlier on, kinda like Argento would have sprinkled in. It takes an awfully long time for the movie to get going. It should be said though, none of the characters except Sweeney’s make much of an impression, even though I liked pretty much the entire cast.
Money Heist star Alvaro Morte is too obvious of a red herring as the church’s priest and the only one who really gets a chance to make a big impression is Benedetta Porcaroli as streetwise novitiate who finds the idea of Sweeney’s carrying the son of God a little tough to swallow. I mean, who could blame her?
But even still, that ending is really, really amazing. Without it, I would say the movie would probably get 6, but I can’t deny that the last scene really kicks the movie up a major notch. Thus, it gets a 7 out of 10, which kind of surprises me, but hey, that scene is amazing. Ed Sidney Sweeney is really good in this.
Look, if you happen to duck out of the movie something like 80 minutes in, you’ll probably think that I’m insane for giving this a 7 out of 10. But if you stick it out until the final credits, you’re gonna see that last sequence is really something. One of the most memorable scenes I’ve seen in a horror movie in a long time.
So on that merit alone, Immaculate gets a big recommendation from me.
[imdb show=”transparent” data=”detailed”]tt23137390[/imdb]
