By now there is a small but significant helping of films where those habit-wearing worshippers of God take their vows a little too seriously and go ballistic on the unchaste. However, the latest delivery of nun-related horror, Michael Mohan‘s Immaculate, deviates somewhat from expectations. Sure, there are naughty nuns in the mix here, but this particular convent hides an even greater evil.
First conceived as a horror story set at a boarding school, Immaculate eventually evolved into a young nun’s nightmarish ordeal after taking her vows. Lead actor and producer Sydney Sweeney plays the newbie nun in question, Cecilia, and soon after her arrival at a remote Italian convent, she discovers an ugliness about her beautiful surroundings and fellow persons of the cloth.
Sweeney’s character is immediately established as innocent but also not naïve. Even as others challenge or try to discourage her — from a pair of pervy customs agents to the skeptical nuns — Cecilia stays true to her beliefs and wards off presumptuous questions. Sadly, those convictions are what make her such an easy target in the story. Clearly something is amiss after witnessing vicious nuns in action during the opening sequence. What that scene establishes, and rather aggressively, is the loss of control. And Mohan and screenwriter Andrew Lobel make good on that theme with both style and intensity. Oh, and lots of jump-scares.
Immaculate is briskly paced, not even quite breaking the 90-minute mark, but there is indeed a credible effort to make Sweeney’s character less of a cursory victim. As she succumbs to the convent’s nefarious plans under the wary notion that this is God’s will, there is, of course, that requisite stretch of suffering, grasping for freedom, and frustrating failures in the story to hurry along the mental change in the protagonist. The character’s anticipated loss of her faith was planted early on — such as a snarky fellow nun pointing out the cracks in the system, and the hesitation seen during Cecilia’s vows — so her transformation isn’t abrupt.
The script is not without its problems. For starters, there is the disjointedness; the three acts (appropriately named after trimesters) have a hard time feeling connected to one another. This lack of cohesion is most glaring in the third and last act, which, admittedly, is the best of the bunch. Yet the film has taken some narrative shortcuts without bothering to inform its audience. Anyone who demands answers in their horror will have a tougher time swallowing all of Cecilia’s peril without an explanation. In that same sense, Immaculate feels more in line with vintage giallo films where everything but story takes precedence.
Corrupting something or someone pure has always been a go-to plot in horror. And perhaps there is no greater concentration of moral purity than a nun. The horror genre goes back to these figures for obvious reasons, and the results are typically flagrant and, well, trashy. Immaculate‘s lush cinematography, locale and general production values all give the film a classier semblance, and Sydney Sweeney’s visceral performance could end up being a career highlight. The story has its above-named shortcomings, however, a flawed script is little reason to damn this new offering of nunsploitation.
Immaculate premiered at South by Southwest 2024 and will be screened in theaters everywhere starting on March 22.
Tales from the Paulside 
Leave a comment