SXSW 2024 Film Review: Immaculate
My 2024 SXSW coverage continues with Michael Mohan’s nun-themed horror film: Immaculate. An attempt at “nunsploitation” that never quite reaches the requisite luridness of its subgenre, Sydney Sweeney’s scream queen turn only finds tepid scares and lukewarm thrills. Minor spoilers ahead…
Everything surrounding Michael Mohan’s Immaculate has boasted its supposed envelope-pushing extremities, from its blasphemy-centered marketing to a hasty labeling as “nunsploitation.” Its grab-you-by-the-throat press blitz - which finds quotes pulled from offended Christian moviegoers and star Sydney Sweeney watching the film with real-life nuns - is admittedly quite effective, but it’s all in service of a movie far too literal and shallow to live up to any of it. Immaculate, even through its gruesome religious terror, would rather tiptoe around a veneer of luridness rather than deliver something that truly sticks to the ribs.
Sweeney plays Cecelia, a young American novitiate who accepts an invitation to join an Italian convent after her Stateside parish shuts down. Having survived an accident as a child where she fell through a frozen lake, Cecelia finds faith in God’s plan, and when she mysteriously falls pregnant despite being a virgin, the clergy (Álvaro Morte, Giorgio Colangeli) are quick to deem her condition the second coming of Christ. At first, the hard-nosed Mother Superior and convent denizens bristle against the American’s presence, but soon after, Cecelia’s inexplicable condition transforms her into a figure to be exalted. It isn’t before long, however, that a creepy, unsettling atmosphere curdles into full-blown horror; there’s a sinister conspiracy afoot, and Cecelia’s “miracle” may not be so miraculous after all.
“Immaculate, even through its gruesome religious terror, would rather tiptoe around a veneer of luridness rather than deliver something that truly sticks to the ribs.”
Immaculate’s interesting, but ultimately tepid, dichotomy instantly recalls Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven’s much-superior “nunsploitation” film from 2021. In Verhoeven’s nun-centered satire, the titular character is sold into religious servitude at a young age where she receives her first abject lesson in faith-based misogyny from her convent’s abbess: “Your body is your enemy, best not to feel at home in it.” Immaculate screenwriter Andrew Lobel also touches upon the weaponization of Christian iconography against women’s bodies, but the movie never attempts to bridge the gap between the provocative clapback it wants to be and the groan-worthy parade of jump scares it ultimately becomes. Its most effective scares - the ones brought upon through Cecelia’s harrowing violation and pregnancy in a supposed palace of God - are few and far between; instead, Immaculate falls on the crutches of its genre’s lowest common denominator thrill-baiting: loud noises, “gotcha” moments, and frenzied bloodletting.
It’s already become part of the film’s marketable canon that Sweeney auditioned for this role over a decade ago, but it was only recently - using her newfound star power and role as producer - that she fished it out of development hell as a passion project. So it’s a little odd that Sweeney, who assured us of her potential with roles in Euphoria and Reality, is largely listless here. Saddled with stilted dialogue conveyed through oddly robotic delivery, Sweeney’s scream queen performance doesn’t come into its own until Immaculate’s final moments. Its whirlwind denouement, which finds Cecelia fighting for her life as the disturbing plot against her is fully unfurled, finally finds a set of razor-sharp teeth. In its bloody, closing moments, Immaculate dares to dip its toe into some transgressive waters, but by then, it’s way too little and way too late.
