Immaculate (2024)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Broken Birds

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Admittedly filled with cliches and logic holes, the nun-horror movie Michael Mohan's Immaculate is also filled with eerily effective filmmaking, thought-provoking themes, and a senses-shattering performance by Sydney Sweeney.

Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) arrives in Italy to take her vows in a beautiful countryside convent. Able to speak only the most minimal Italian, she nevertheless begins to fit in, finding a friend in Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) and a mentor in the kind Father Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte). She begins having strange dreams and seeing unsettling sights.

One morning, she unexpectedly vomits and is sent to the doctor. They make a startling discovery: despite never being sexually active, Sister Cecilia is pregnant. Cardinal Merola (Giorgio Colangeli) declares it a miracle, and the nuns work to prepare Sister Cecilia for the arrival of the child, whom some believe is a savior. But Sister Gwen seems to think something is up, and Sister Cecilia soon finds she has no choice but to agree.

It might have been little more than a guilty pleasure, but what sends Immaculate over the top is its gobsmack of an ending, a shockingly long take with Sweeney doing some heavy physical and emotional lifting and fully earning her paycheck.

Before that, there are questions. If this type of thing has happened before (as is revealed in the denouncement), why doesn't anyone seem to remember it, and why are they acting as if this was the first time? And why does Sister Cecilia wait until she's in labor until she decides to try her violent escape? It's more dramatic this way, sure, but it would have been more practical to try it at any point during the previous nine months.

Yet it's almost as if writer Andrew Lobel and Mohan (who directed Sweeney in The Voyeurs) are aware of the silliness and choose to pile it on. The scares are all pretty familiar, but the filmmakers seem to be having fun with them.

The convent is full of the squeakiest floors and the creakiest doors, and it's just gloomy enough that there seem to be figures creeping in the corners. And of course, old-time hymns take on a new, sinister factor. When a character mentions, during Sister Cecilia's initial tour, that the convent was built on top of an old catacombs ("it's off limits!"), we know that it will show up at the climax, and we're not disappointed.

Immaculate has some of the same qualities that made Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta work on an over-the-top way. It's "nunsploitation" at its most haywire.