Immaculate

Directed by Michael Mohan. Starring Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte and Benedetta Porcaroli.

(Seen in March)

After her convent in the United States closes, Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) accepts an invitation from Father Sal Tedeschi (Morte) to join an exclusive convent in Italy where dying nuns spend their final days, cared for by the order. Despite the language difficulties she travels to Italy and becomes part of the order. She makes a friend in Sister Gwen (Porcaroli) and something of an enemy in Sister Isabelle.

As time passes, she notices certain odd things about the convent. Who are the nuns whose faces are covered by red fabric, why does one nun have scars in the shape of crucifixes on the souls of her feet, and is the holy relic hidden away really a nail from the crucifixion?

When something miraculous happens Cecilia finds herself feted by the church, though not by Sister Isabelle, but she becomes increasingly convinced that something terrible is happening at the church, but can she possibly escape her fate?

This nunsploitation film hit the cinemas around the same time as Late Night with the Devil, and I’ve already seen some comparing the way their audiences are feeding off each other as being similar to the Barbenheimer phenomenon from last year. Of course, Barbie and Oppenheimer were radically different films, and while Immaculate and Late Night with the Devil might be different takes on the horror genre, they are both clearly in the horror genre. If people have been encouraged by seeing one into seeing the other, then that’s no bad thing in my opinion.

For me Late Night with the Devil is the superior. Immaculate is decent enough, and given how many lousy horror films there are in the world that’s quite a positive. It benefits from the undoubted star quality of Sweeney, and a final act that’s borderline insane (and a final scene that’s quite shocking whilst showing us absolutely nothing, relying on Sweeney’s performance and our imaginations.)

I think the main flaw with the film is that it isn’t quite sure what kind of film it wants to be. A creepy, unsettling Rosemary’s Baby of a psychological horror, or a jump scare infused gore fest. While it isn’t impossible to merge the two, it doesn’t work completely here, and I wish they’d leaned a little more into the weird. Those red faced nuns are genuinely creepy, we just don’t see enough of them.

The other probably with the film is the fact that its main plot point necessitates quite a lot of time passing, which means months must pass between spooky moments, and this kinda deflates the tension somewhat. It takes Cecilia an awful long time to realise something is amiss.

Sweeney is likely to be a big star, if she isn’t already, it’s easy to be distracted by her looks, but she is a good actress and she has such a talent for promoting herself that even career choices that might on paper seem poor ones (Madam Webb) somehow still feed into her star power. She’s done some brilliant promotional work for Immaculate and her enthusiasm should be lauded.

The rest of the cast do a good job of seeming friendly or creepy as the script necessitates (special mention for Morte who seems equally comfortable as the warm and friendly priest and the deranged Dr Frankenstein.).

It’s nice and gory, has a couple of nicely executed jump scares (the one in the confessional genuinely misdirected me) and Sweeney is very watchable, I just can’t help feeling it should have added up to slightly more than the sum of its parts. It might grow on me with repeat viewings however.