Review: Immaculate (2024)

Reviewer Flickchart ranking: 2,219 / 5,423 (59%)

Newly-minted household name Sydney Sweeney is back on the silver screen in her second team-up with director Michael Mohan, following The Voyeurs (2021). In this film incarnation, Sweeney plays Cecilia, a young American woman preparing to take her vows at a picturesque Italian convent. We are told the convent specializes in late-in-life care for ill and aging nuns. Run by the alluring Father Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte) and Cardinal Merola (Giorgio Colangeli), the convent hints at modern horrors deep within the ancient catacombs below. 

Immaculate begins as many horror films do with an opening scare. The sequence is shot well and establishes some recurring aesthetics, but it darob gives too much away. Anyone lining up to see a Catholic-themed horror movie hardly needs it to be established that evil stuff is probably happening in there.   

Mohan’s film is careful in its pacing, giving us just enough in moments of confusion, suspicion, or violence to keep the audience on its toes. However, nothing about the storyline is remarkable in how characters develop (if they do at all), or where our concern lies. Rather than trying to deceive the audience through novelty, Mohan uses the tried-and-true trappings of the religious horror genre to make broader points about the religious patriarchy and women’s control over their own bodies.

Sweeney’s performance drives Immaculate, and the supporting cast all offer convincing turns that lead up to a grand finale. The climax of Immaculate is what separates it from run-of-the-mill Catholic fright feasts. While some of the violence is rudimentary, Mohan pushes the boundaries of what audiences will accept from their protagonist, and Sweeney attacks that material ferociously.

While still not a groundbreaking experience, Immaculate provides a stronger story, more confident performances, and a riskier finale than recent religious horror titles like The Pope’s Exorcist, The Nun II, and The Exorcist: Believer. Sweeney offers a restrained and ultimately empowering performance that makes this one worth seeing.