IMMACULATE (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Immaculate, Neon

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 22, 2024

It comes as little surprise that Immaculate botches its payoff when there's really not much to the setup in the first place. Here's a religious horror movie, revolving around some dark dealings in a convent, that doesn't seem to know why or care about how it probably should at least explain why its premise is a big deal. The theological implications of what seems to happen to Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney), though, are the last thing on the movie's mind.

At the top of that list is a series of sequences of poor Cecilia being frightened by a bunch of things. Director Michael Mohan doesn't even give us a proper horror show in that regard, either, partly because Andrew Lobel's screenplay establishes a firm, predictable pattern and mostly because the director does the same thing with his scare tactics. The only thing less scary than a cheap, poorly staged jump-scare is about a dozen of them telegraphed to us at every opportunity.

This does start with a pretty unsettling scene, although that has nothing to do with trying to suddenly surprise us. Somewhere in Italy, a young nun is trying to escape the convent where she lives, only to be discovered by a quartet of cloaked figures. This is, of course, the usual stuff of any given horror story, since it seems as if filmmakers for the past several decades have stopped trusting that an audience has the patience to wait more than five minutes for the first fright to occur. However, the introductory scene here ends, not with some brutal death, but with the promise of a slow, terrifying one in a cramped space, where no one can hear the cries for help—if anyone listening would care if they did.

Ultimately, this scene means nothing, except to establish what's pretty clear as soon as Cecilia arrives at the same convent. Something is wrong with this place and its inhabitants. The Mother Superior (Dora Romano) puts on a pleasant face to greet the newly arrived novice, who will be taking her vows later in the day, but rather fiercely scolds Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi) for questioning one of her orders. Isabelle doesn't care for the new arrival, but all of this is less important, apparently, than the need to establish that the convent was built atop catacombs and is the home of one of the nails that crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Is it possible that both of these things will come into play during the third act?

After a lot of similar foreshadowing and a couple of attempted startles (A bird slams into a window as Cecilia stares out it, and she discovers a wailing nun lying prostrate and wearing an eerie red cover over her face), the hook of the story—but definitely nothing resembling an actual plot, since it's mostly Cecilia waiting around for the climax—reveals itself. Somehow, the new nun becomes pregnant. This is apparently impossible, since Cecilia has taken a vow of chastity and had never had sex before that, either.

The convent's priest (played by Álvaro Morte), the diocese's cardinal (played by Giorgio Colangeli), and the local doctor (played by Giampiero Judica) immediately assume a divine conception. If that sounds like the setup to a joke, it kind of is, because Cecilia and everyone else just accepts that the nun is going to give birth to the second coming of Jesus. There's a good reason no one in the convent is suspicious of such an apparent leap in logic, but what's Cecilia's excuse?

Well, she has to more or less believe it, or else, the story might come to a quicker stop. In a way, it mostly does, anyway, because the rest of the screenplay evades any questions, ideas, or even minor considerations of the either the implications of a divine pregnancy or some other potentially nefarious actions that may have occurred.

The truth is for later—and quite silly. Before that and a routine chase that suggests the participants don't have an understanding of how light works (It's possible Mohan might not, either, considering how a frequently a character shines a flashlight directly into the camera, making the sequence doubly irritating), it's more of the usual. Cecilia keeps wandering around, only to be surprised by something or someone, and having dreams, only to be shocked by something or someone, and letting her guard down, only to be attacked by something or someone.

The repetition eliminates any kind of suspense, regardless of how moody the locale is and how convincing Sweeney may be as the tormented nun. Immaculate just goes through the motions without much of a justification for doing so.

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