Immaculate (2024 movie)

Category: Nun horror

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If you asked me even last week if I'd be eager to see Sydney Sweeney in a film, any film - let alone a horror - I'd have laughed you out the building. I mean, after her performance (if I could call it that) in Madame Web, who would have thought a nun-horror film would be the thing to sway my opinion?

But sway my opinion it did, and while I'm nowhere near becoming a Sydney Sweeney fan-boi, I can see her becoming an top-level actress if she can make some minor improvements to how she goes about her craft (something I will expand on later).

So the plot of this movie isn't TOO deep and meaningful, but interesting nun-theless (see what I did there?):

Like all good nun-horror films, we start with a flashback to a scene however many decades prior where a young nun in her convent/abbey/cloister sneaks into the bedroom of her Mother Superior and steals a set of keys. Said nun then runs towards the front gate and fumbles the keys as four hooded figures bear down on her. The nun is able to unlock the gate, but that gate is also chained and the chain has just enough slack to squeeze her body through. But right as she gets out, she slips and a hooded figure grabs her leg, pulls it back through the gate and gives it a twist to (painfully) ensure the nun isn't able to run anywhere in a hurry.

But that wasn't necessary, as in the next scene we see the nun has been put into a box and is being buried alive.

Cut to the current day and Sweeney plays Cecilia, a novitiate who is yet to take her vows. Cecilia takes up a position in an Italian convent run by Father Sal Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte) who supports Cecilia by translating the Italian. A big help, given that the Mother Superior and Cardinal Merola don't speak much English.

Cecilia gets her rosary after her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and is put to work under the tutelage of Sister Isabelle - a no-nonsense, no-humour hard-ass who teaches the women how to do palliative care, Catholic-stye. As it turns out, the convent is for nuns who are on their way out.

To counter Sister Isabelle, Cecilia forms a bond with Sister Gwen, a smoking, potty-mouthed woman who found a calling in the Order after running away from an abusive relationship. It is also revealed that Cecilia ended up at this Italian convent after her convent back in America closed due to low attendance, and it is implied that Father Tedeschi sought these two girls out.

Anyway, given this is a horror film, spooky things are bound to happen such as the usual people appearing and disappearing schtick, but the first clue something is up is that Cecilia hears a woman crying and wailing. She follows the noise to see a robed woman prostrate on the ground and when Cecilia talks to the woman, the woman's head turns around and we see a featureless red mask looking back.

Another spooky spooky thing is that Cecilia is suddenly woken up by an elderly nun who cuts off a lock of her hair. Upon returning the nun to her bed in the hospice ward, Cecilia notices cruciform scars on the soles of the nun's feet.

We also see the Mother Superior take Cecilia down to a room where there is a holy relic - one of the very nails used to crucify Jesus, brought in by St. Helena herself (you know, the mother of Emperor Constantine, the guy who helped establish the Roman Catholic Church!).

And then we get to the plot twist - it turns out that Cecilia is pregnant, despite her having kept her vow of chastity both before and after entering the convent. This is hailed a miracle, Cecilia is venerated (though not without some misgivings about the situation) and she is told she is no longer to perform work - her job is to carry the baby.

So while Cecilia is relaxing in a bath, Isabelle attempts to drown her. Cecilia gets a reprieve when she bites Isabelle's hand, and then again when the Father and the others jump in and pull Isabelle off her. However, as Isabelle is pulled away, she screams that "it should have been me" to carry the baby and to "try the test again". If that ain't professional jealousy, I don't know what is. Anyway, in the post-attempted murder check-up, baby seems to be OK, but Cecilia is shaken up and asks to be taken to a hospital whereupon she is told that "hospitals aren't safe" as a way for the higher-ups in the convent to keep her there. Just as long as the baby is OK, I suppose...

In the next scene, as Cecilia is walking outside, we see a figure in the background fall off of a building and then hear a thud a couple of seconds later. Cecilia walks past the gathered crowd of nuns and sees the dead woman is Isabelle (though you wouldn't know straight away given how badly mangled the face and body are). After this, Cecilia complains to Gwen that she wasn't allowed to leave the convent to go to a hospital, and given Isabelle's recent attempt at attempted murder and sudden death (because if you replay her death scene, it does kinda look like she falls rather than jumps), Gwen goes on a foul-mouthed Italian rant that gets her forcibly taken in by the Father and one of the deacons.

While in her room reading, Cecilia is startled when a picture hanging on the wall suddenly falls off, revealing 2 Corinthians 11:14 (but in Italian), the verse about the devil masquerading as an angel of light, in handwriting obscured by the hanging picture. To satisfy her growing unease, Cecilia sneaks into the Father's office, breaks into a drawer and finds a file on her that contains a news report of her near-death experience when she was a child, but also a genetic report.

Further crying and wailing can be heard which Cecilia follows, and through the keyhole of a massive wooden door, we see Gwen strapped to a chair getting her tongue cut out. Cecilia is then startled by the same elderly nun from before who tells Cecilia that she'll never leave the convent.

In the next scene, Cecilia is seen lying on her bed, screaming and covered in blood around her stomach and legs and she is rushed into the convent car to be taken to a hospital (which is quite a way away as this convent is quite remote). However, as Cecilia is lying on the nice, leather seat of the car screaming and crying, the Mother Superior who is praying by Cecilia's bedside notices a feather on the ground, and then the rest of the dead chicken wrapped in a bloody pillow case - Mother Superior twigs to the fact that Cecilia faked a possible miscarriage as a way of escape and calls Father Tedeschi on his phone.

Once the car stops, Cecilia runs out across a field, but is soon caught by the Father who takes her back to the convent. After a washing and dressing down by the Mother Superior, Cecilia is taken by Father Tedeschi for a whole lot of exposition - it turns out that Father Tedeschi was a legitimate biologist in a previous career some time ago, and using his knowledge and training, he was able to extract the DNA from the blood and bone fragments on the nail brought back by St. Helena all those years (centuries!) ago. Feeling restrained by the ethics of standard scientific practice, he went rogue in his search for a way to tap in to the eternal life supposedly carried on the DNA of Jesus and was thus accomodated by the RCC as he impregnated women (implying that numerous nuns in the hospice were failed experiments). But we do have the mild issue of disobedience to sort out, and to that end, Cecilia gets the soles of her feet branded with cruciforms.

As the birth of this virgin baby is imminent, Cecilia is on a table being examined by the Mother Superior and the convent doctor. The doctor informs the Mother Superior that he needs to go get some medication for Cecilia, giving Cecilia the perfect opportunity to smash Mother Superior's face in with a metal crucifix. As Cecilia runs out of the room, her waters break (leading to the funniest "goddammit" in cinematic history). The next victim in Cecilia's murder spree is Cardinal Merola who is choked with some rosary beads. After this, Cecilia walks into Father Tedeschi's lab and pours ethanol over everything, right as Father Tedeschi himself walks in. Some quick thinking by Cecilia gets her out of the lab and on the other side of the door, setting the lab alight while Father Tedeschi is locked inside.

Thinking her ordeal is over, she breathes a sigh of relief - until she hears a fire extinguisher being dispersed and Father Tedeschi breaking through his door.

A chase ensues between a heavily pregnant, barefoot and scarred Cecilia and post-smoke inhalation Father Tedeschi through the catacombs underneath the convent. Cue jump scare where Cecilia suddenly turns her flashlight on to see the corpse of Gwen. Cecilia sees an opening to the outside world, but right as she is about to get out, Father Tedeschi grabs her, rips her dress open and tries to cut the baby out of her. However, the relic that Cecilia hid in her dress comes in to good use as she stabs Father Tedeschi in the throat with it.

Having made it to the outside world, she finds herself alone in the countryside and we find ourselves looking at an uncomfortable close-up of Cecilia, covered in blood and screaming as she is giving birth. She finally pushes the baby out and we hear this ungodly gurgling and wheezing, and in the final act of the film, Cecilia grabs a rock and crushes the baby with it.

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Man, that ending is something else. 

While Sydney Sweeney's performance was good, if not outright decent, I do have a couple of quibbles about the film, especially given that she was also a producer on the film. But let me get in to what I liked first:

The practical effects - ESPECIALLY the face of Isabelle after she has fallen to her death - it is deliciously gory! We do also see in the Mother Superior death scene, the opening scene with Sister Mary and with Father Tedeschi's death, the effects are really good and really convey a sense of danger and doesn't feel too hokey.

Cecilia at the end, face covered in blood, in labour pains and screaming down the camera - that is wonderfully uncomfortable viewing!

And with the gore, there were times when I felt taken aback - surprise Caesarian, anyone? That final attempt by Father Tedeschi to remove the baby by taking a scalpel to Cecilia's stomach was stomach-churning, not to mention Cecilia biting through the umbilical cord after giving birth, and even the scene where Cecilia's feet are branded - that shot lingered on uncomfortably long and the branding looked gnarly!

I didn't mind the jump scares either. What's a nun-horror film without a foreboding location and a few jump scares?

And let's not forget how scary Mother Superior, Father Tedeschi and Cardinal Merola come across - ESPECIALLY in the scene where Mother Superior calls Father Tedeschi and you can see the realisation on Sweeney's face that the jig is up.

And to give the film another plus - this wasn't a supernatural horror film, a bit of a rarity in the nun-horror subgenre. I don't have a problem with supernatural films per se - I just have a problem with the supernatural being used as a lazy writing device.

So to this end, Immaculate did its job as a horror film. It was well-shot, well-directed and well-acted. Even in the presence of unanswered questions - the biggest being "who are the people in the red masks?", but let's not also forget "why did they show the nun from the beginning of the movie if she wasn't going to be a plot point later on?", the movie was thoroughly enjoyable!

But I do have a couple of issues centering around Sweeney's performance. Now, I mean all of this as constructive criticism, so if Ms. Sweeney or her people were ever to read this, please don't take all this personally.

If I've noticed anything from watching two Sydney Sweeney movies, it's that Sweeney has a tendency to deliver her lines in a manner that comes across as Sydney Sweeney reading lines to fulfil a contractual obligation, rather than as Sydney Sweeney conveying the fullness of the character she is portraying. So in this film, the best example that comes to mind is when Cecilia is being forcibly showered by Mother Superior after attempting to escape and she has blood all over her (you know, from the dead chicken and fake miscarriage thing). Mother Superior is scolding Cecilia in Italian and asks (with subtitles on the screen), "What do you have to say for yourself?". Cecilia then replies, in English, "May God never forgive you!" which gets a firm slap in response.

To me, the delivery of this particulaer line felt forced. So while Sweeney says her line and has a snarl and gritted teeth, I really didn't feel any particular sense of anger or frustration. And maybe because (and this is just me thinking here) out of all the things to say to a Mother Superior, I don't know if I would have gone with that. It's possible that take was the best out of all the takes, and maybe someone decided that line in that manner was the right one - I just happen to disagree.

But whatever line was said, it leads me to my next criticism - that line (and numerous others) would have so much more emphasis had they been said in Italian! You know how you sometimes have those scenes in low-budget movies where a foreign character has been brought in to converse with the main character, and it's painfully obviously neither knows the other's language, but in order to drive the plot, they have a conversation across two languages that feels forced? That's how this shower scene came across.

So, in this scene Cecilia is standing there, being berated by an Italian nun spitting out harsh words in Italian while she is being forcibly showered, but then Cecilia responds…in English...to a person who we have established speaks very little if any English. It strikes me as strange that Cecilia can understand Italian being spat at her, but doesn't respond in kind. And to me, I would have had a lot more admiration for Sweeney's acting chops, as well as her directing chops, had Cecilia's character shown that she can speak converstional Italian. Have her conversing in Italian as she's discussing Father Tedeschi's work. Have her conversing in Italian when she's discussing wanting to go to a hospital. Or, conversely, you could have a scene showing that Cecilia indeed knows Italian and is picking up on things said about her, but she doesn’t let on that she knows so she can scheme her way out of things.

Cecilia clearly has the wits and wherewithal to fake a miscarriage and to take advantage of a situation in order to kill two people and set fire to a third - but she can't learn conversational Italian while working in an Italian palliative care facility? I would have bought the "Sydney Sweeney as a badass heroine" idea had I seen more cultural intelligence from the character.

Having said all that, it's not like Sweeney gave a horrible performance - far from it. The good times definitely outweighed the suspect times, and the times I thought could have used some improvement, the improvements are minor.

And on a plot point, I'd strongly disagree with the idea about relics containing the DNA of Jesus. Given that St. Helena only started the idea of Christian relics during the 4th century, and also that 1st century Romans weren't big on making keepsakes of the implements they used for executing people - even in the very unlikely scenario that St. Helena had somehow found the very nails used to execute Jesus three centuries after the fact - there's a very high probability that the same nail was used on numerous other people. And let's not forget that numerous people would have touched the same nail in its adventures (especially since it's a long way from Jerusalem to Rome), that numerous people have touched the nail at the convent, and that DNA on surfaces or materials that aren't protected would not last a couple of thousand years. So when Father Tedeschi is examining the nail for DNA, whose DNA would he really be getting? Blind faith makes you believe and do questionable things sometimes.

But look, Sydney Sweeney shows enough promise that if she can deliver her lines more consistently and emphatically and square some circles in her directing, I look forward to what she stars in in future - especially if it's horror.

STAR RATING: 4/5