Behold, Sydney Sweeney is risen in Immaculate
Here’s a nice religious horror movie that wears its influences on its bloody sleeve.
Further embracing a more active role in her career, Sydney Sweeney (“Euphoria,” “Anyone But You”) saved this project that she auditioned for a decade ago, when she was just 16. Sweeney was in a much different place in her career then, and the project stalled. When she had a bit more cache thanks to appearances in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” her breakout in “Euphoria” and the first season of “The White Lotus,” she had her people track down the script that had excited her back then. Finding it was available, she took it on as a producer for active development, with herself attached to star. Assembling the team, scouting locations, a few years later and here we are with the first good horror of the year.Sweeney plays Sister Cecilia, a young woman about to take her vows as a new transfer to an old convent in the Italian countryside. She doesn’t speak the language yet, she’s surprised she even got the invitation, but as her parish was closing down due to lack of attendance, she welcomed the opportunity to up stakes and fly off to a hopefully fresh start. The old convent acts mostly as a home for other members of the cloth receiving palliative care, already a setting pregnant with spookiness. Her immediate superior, Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield di Renzi), seems to resent her, but she finds a fast friend in Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli). Father Sal (Àlvaro Morte—morte!) welcomes her and assuages her anxieties, explaining how he was already fully into a career in the sciences before he received his calling. Cecilia settles in, but soon enough finds herself seeing things, having nightmares. Something feels off, until one night an encounter leaves a lasting change, and we’re off to the races.
Setting up scares
Andrew Lobel’s screenplay does a pretty good job of setting up both scares and payoffs as far as plot twists and narrow escapes go, and director Michael Mohan effectively turns the screws in this slow-burn paranoiac seat of discomfort, before barrelling full bore into thriller territory. Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” can’t be avoided as an influence, but it also draws from some Hammer horror films in its compositions and use of candlelight, some Italian giallo (though the recent remake of “Suspiria” by Luca Guadagnino with Dakota Johnson seems a stronger inspiration) in its gore, even the horror comics of Garth Ennis (who was raised Catholic and knows how to use the iconography). The themes of body autonomy are potent and seem particularly suited to Sweeney, who’s had to fight against typecasting and setting up your own projects at studios seems the best bet in that struggle.Porcaroli’s Sister Gwen has a backstory that dovetails also into that theme, and she acquits herself well as a woman who will not stand for any further abuse. “The White Lotus” alum Simona Tabasco has a memorable scene, and Morte’s Father Sal resembles an evil Italian Jimmy Fallon in some shots, while expositing some evil machinations that seem all too scarily plausible. Di Renzi’s features look like they can cut glass when they give Cecilia the evil eye, but Sweeney is far and away the main draw here, delivering her finest performance yet, certainly her best since last year’s “Reality” on MAX. She joins the ranks of terrific Final Girls, with a scream and finale that should linger on in audiences memories during these next few weeks.
Indeed, that sense of the macabre, the plausibility of the evil and the knowing use of iconography have incensed some members of the conservative right in the United States and distributor Neon have taken some of those social media posts decrying the film as “blasphemy” and using it as grassroots marketing for the summer horror.Following “Anyone But You,” which raked in over $100 million worldwide, “Immaculate” shows Sweeney to be a shrewd producer with an eye for projects suited for her. It should be interesting to see what she sinks her teeth into next, considering “Euphoria” won’t be returning anytime soon.
