Immaculate opens in theaters March 22. This review is based on a screening at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival.
Religious horror just doesn’t have the impact that it used to. Even in the 1970s, when The Exorcist scared America into believing in the Devil again, the percentage of those who claimed membership to a house of worship was about 25 percent higher than it was in 2020. Neon’s new Catholic-themed horror movie Immaculate acknowledges this trend, using the dissolution of our heroine’s hometown parish as motivation for her to move to Italy and become a nun. (Drastic measures, but sure.) It even nods to a key driver of lost faith among Catholics, as Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) asks Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) if her church closed because “the priest got in trouble.”
Pure as she is, Cecilia understands what Gwen is implying, and insists that’s not what happened – at least, not in her case. The film continues engaging with the Catholic Church’s history of sexual abuse, albeit in that sideways sort of way that scary movies have of addressing real-life horrors. This isn’t a possession movie, unless you consider the hijacking of reproductive freedom by patriarchal forces (see also: the 2020 HBO documentary Baby God) to be demonically inspired. That’s a provocative idea, but unfortunately Immaculate’s execution is as safe as can be.
After a cold open featuring black-robed silhouettes gliding across a misty courtyard in pursuit of a runaway lamb, Immaculate turns its attention to Cecilia, who’s just arrived at the Our Lady of Sorrows convent in hopes of pledging her life to the Church. She does so under the mentorship of Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), a former geneticist who’s a little too handsome to be a priest. On the night of her novitiate ceremony, Cecilia tells Father Sal about a near-death experience she had when she was 12 years old; she believes God saved her for a reason, and she hopes to find that reason at Our Lady of Sorrows. Boy, will she ever.
The vibe at the convent is part cottagecore and part goth. The sisters spend their days hanging laundry and caring for the sick in a green, bucolic valley that happens to sit on top of an ancient catacomb. It’s a beautiful place, shot with an overcast color palette illuminated by flickering orange flames of candlelight. Death is “a part of everyday life” at the convent, as stern Sister Mary (Simona Tabasco) tells Cecilia. That’s not enough to frighten her on its own – Catholicism is a famously morbid religion, as demonstrated by the sisters’ veneration of a long iron nail supposedly pulled from Christ’s own palm. But the screaming in the courtyard and nuns in red zentai suits ought to ring some alarm bells, no?
Cecilia’s leisurely awakening to the rather obvious truth that something sinister is at work at Our Lady of Sorrows is a major flaw of the film’s structure, which meanders for quite a while before deciding that it might as well start ramping up the tension just before its climax. During this long lull, Sweeney’s face is placid and her body language is inert; at best, her eyes fill with tears and her lips quiver, as in a scene where her fellow nuns dress her in the vestments of the Virgin Mother for an esoteric ritual in the convent’s chapel. It’s a striking image, but its impact doesn’t linger – little in the first 80 minutes of this 88-minute film does.
Immaculate has an outrageous ending that almost makes up for the formulaic nature of everything that preceds it, as Cecilia finally finds her courage and Sweeney starts delivering the kind of gonzo, blood-soaked performance that a film like this needs. But by then, it’s too late. Up to that point, director Michael Mohan allows sheer volume – in the form of both loud jump scares and deep, rumbling musical cues – to do much of the work in terms of terrifying the audience. By prioritizing these cheap thrills, he leaves many promising elements – a macabre setting, a rising star, an aesthetic appreciation for the classics of the genre, old ladies skittering around dark hallways and making creepy dolls out of hair – behind.
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