Our Lady of Perpetually Bad Vibes - Immaculate (2024)

the father, the son, the holy shit my nerves are shot

Consider this your spoiler warning as per usual. Also trigger warning for blood.

Immaculate

Directed by: Michael Mohan

Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Benedetta Porcaroli, Dora Romano, Giorgio Colangeli, Simona Tabasco, Giulia Heathfield di Renzi

Run time: 89 minutes

Out March 22nd

but first

Michael Buckner for SXSW 2024 Conference & Festivals

I mean I just wanted an excuse to post this picture, if I’m honest with you.

the plot, in short

Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney), a devout young woman, arrives in Italy where she is to take her vows at an illustrious convent which tends to dying nuns in their final days. Having found religion after a freak childhood accident which left her clinically dead for seven minutes, she has accepted the invitation to join the convent, hoping it will help her figure out why God saved her.

With a shaky grasp on the Italian language and a severe case of the bombastic side eye coming from the more senior Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield di Renzi), Cecilia nonetheless takes her vows and starts working, striking up a friendship with fellow novice Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli).

But soon, Cecilia starts noticing that things are not right at this convent - and when, to her horror, she is discovered to be pregnant despite having never had sexual relations, it’s only the beginning of an increasingly batshit series of events…

Four reasons you should definitely see Immaculate (aka I try to convince you to see this movie without actually spoiling the ending)

I will preface this by saying that this is far from a perfect movie. In fact, while I am all in favour of movies that have a slightly less bum-numbing run time (Immaculate clocks in at a brisk and beautifully insane 89 minutes) this is the rare movie that I feel could have benefitted from an extra twenty or so minutes in order to let the story (and the viewer) fully breathe.

Immaculate also is guilty of one too many jump scares, which, while I am not against the use of a jump scare, I think this movie could have used more emphasis on its rolling dread without having that peak and drop of a jump scare to break it up. If there was more emphasis on that dread, it could have had room to fully lean in to its own weirdness and then we’d truly have a full blown new classique of the genre on our hands.

However, having said this, please enjoy me trying to dance around the ending while I present you with four reasons to see this in a theatre.

Reason number 1: she is giving you the visuals

Immaculate has some truly breathtaking visual moments, especially where it allows the religious imagery to warp like it does in the scene where Cecilia is presented to the convent as a Maria figure, tears welling in her eyes as we look upon her face in close up and see a deep fear brewing.

Additionally, any movie which allows me to talk about the use of liminal space is a movie after my own heart and the shots of Cecilia arriving at the convent, after driving through the drizzly Italian countryside, are extremely up my street. Seen from above, Cecilia steps out of the car, surrounded by the pebbles on the driveway, the vastness of her surroundings conveying the daunting reality of being far away from home, in a strange (and how) new environment, with a language barrier preventing you from full communication with the people you are now spending your days with. One shot, but it is a shot that speaks loudly.

Reason number 2: when it’s weird it’s WEIRD

Again, I really wish it was slightly longer so we could fully peel away at the clearly many layers of fucking hell that are going on in the convent but the little nuggets of weird that start piling up (why does this one nun have a crucifix-shaped scar on the sole of her foot? why is this other nun randomly *standing there* at Cecilia’s bed side in the middle of the night muttering benedetta! ? why does this convent have what’s supposedly one of the nails from Jesus’s cross lying around in the crypt? why is Sister Isabelle the way she is?) pile up fast and there are some genuinely tense scenes as Cecilia is terrified to find out she’s somehow immaculately conceived and the people around her seem to care quite a bit less about her wellbeing and quite a bit more about being fucking weirdos to her unborn child.

Reason number 3: The third act is a deliciously concentrated burst of insanity

Somewhere around the moment where it’s revealed what is actually going on in Italy’s most fucked up convent, Immaculate fully leans in to its own chaos and it is both delightful and VERY STRESSFUL. The last twenty or so minutes is essentially Sydney Sweeney as Cecilia deciding OH FUCK THIS SHIT and while I cannot tell you any more without spoiling matters, I can tell you two things:

1) the ending includes one of the most metal things I have ever seen anyone do in a mainstream horror movie.

2) it includes THIS visual

And on a related matter…

Reason number 4: Sydney Sweeney

In the hands of any other person, this movie and its central role would not have worked. But in the hands of Sydney Sweeney, it absolutely does. The actress, who came to prominence on HBO’s Euphoria and The White Lotus and has been steadily building her film career (most recently with the surprise rom com hit Anyone But You and also a role in Madame Web but we will not linger), first auditioned for the film back in 2014, but the project never materialised.

And it speaks to the kind of direction she wants to take her career in that, rather than letting it go, she picked the project back up as a producer (Sweeney founded production company Fifty-Fifty Films in 2020, and executive produced Anyone But You) acquiring and revising the script, getting director Michael Mohan on board and finding financiers before selling the film to distributors Neon.

Let’s be very clear, the role of Cecilia is not an easy one. It’s a very physical, visceral role (especially near the end) and Sweeney could have very easily handed the reigns to another actor. Instead, she fucking goes hell for leather (during filming of the last take, she reportedly got fake blood in her eye and despite being in quite a lot of pain, she determinedly had Mohan shoot until the take was perfect) and the movie absolutely sings when she does. That final, excruciatingly visceral scene is basically an assertion: Sydney Sweeney is a force to be reckoned with, someone who will do some pretty fucked up shit on camera and not even blink while doing so. It’s a quality which I very much hope she will bring to more horror films because she is a natural (and terrifyingly awesome) fit for the genre.

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