Immaculate
Jolts of gruesome originality blend uneasily with the same old horror tropes in an inadvertently chucklesome affair.
A Nun’s Story: Sydney Sweeney
As these things happen, nuns are suddenly all the rage. Only last week we had Cate Blanchett as Sister Eileen in The New Boy and Catherine Coldstream’s memoir Cloistered has been attracting unseemly attention in the broadsheets. Then, on April 5, we have The First Omen which, per the publicity, is about “a young American woman sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church,” which sounds exactly like Immaculate. And bad things happen. Potential novitiates, though, might wish to avoid Immaculate, unless they want a good old unintentional laugh and to change their vocation forever.
The suddenly ubiquitous Sydney Sweeney produces and stars as Cecilia Jones, an American virgin who, for inexplicable reasons, has set her sights on a convent in the Italian countryside, even though she cannot speak Italian. God works in mysterious ways. The first test of her faith is at Immigration, where the officials give her a hard time for having a one-way ticket. Then there’s the interminable drive from the airport, before an icy reception from Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi), who mutters, “death is a part of everyday life here.” But Cecilia is not to be deterred and that evening she takes her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. She’s now a part of the sisterhood.
There’s an ally in Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli), who smokes on the sly and confides in Cecilia that, “we’re all head cases or runaways.” But Cecilia would seem to be the real thing, indebted to the Almighty for saving her life from drowning at a young age. She also swears that she’s never had congress with a man, so imagine her surprise when she discovers that she is with child…
Immaculate is not as dull as Imaginary, but it’s still a hackneyed affair, religiously adhering to the template of the genre. It starts with an unnecessary prologue where we witness a young woman running for her life, and then there’s a nightmarish sequence that turns out to be just that – a nightmare – and the jump scares arrive obediently during any moment of sudden calm. On a brighter side, the production design is immaculate and Sydney Sweeny takes her role very seriously indeed, while the make-up effects are queasily authentic. There are gruesome moments of originality that horror fans will no doubt be talking about for years to come, where birth and death meet in the same sentence. There is an air of Midsommar about the macabre otherworldliness of it all, albeit nowhere near as convincing. To have pulled off a Grand Guignol finish, it needed a very clever coda to justify everything that went before, but merely ends abruptly on a black screen.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Dora Romano, Benedetta Porcaroli, Giorgio Colangeli, Simona Tabasco, Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi, Giampiero Judica.
Dir Michael Mohan, Pro Sydney Sweeney, David Bernad, Jonathan Davino, Teddy Schwarzman and Michael Heimler, Screenplay Andrew Lobel, Ph Elisha Christian, Pro Des Adam Reamer, Ed Christian Masini, Music Will Bates.
Black Bear Pictures/Fifty-Fifty Films/Middle Child Pictures-Black Bear Pictures.
88 mins. USA/Italy. 2024. UK and US Rel: 22 March 2024. Cert. 18.
