“Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”( Shakespeare’s Hamlet to Ophelia.)
Immaculate is one of the horror films not horrible in the generic sense that uses multiple tropes like jump scares and mis-directions to scare the bejesus out of the audience. It is rather a well-thought-out dissection of the forces with which a normal young woman must contend as she prepares to fulfill her vows as a nun.
It is also a rather somber treatise on the hopes and dreams of a faith community investing in one figure outsized enough to achieve quasi sainthood in her lifetime. Cecilia (a remarkable Sydney Sweeney, reminding us of Anna Taylor-Joy with uber-expressive eyes) travels to picturesque Italy to a famous convent for dying nuns.
Sweeney plays her as an innocent who eventually becomes the hopes of a major enclave of nuns veritably waiting for the re-emergence of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in this case the virginal Cecilia. They are certain it is Cecilia because she becomes with child, and, well, she’s damned comely and innocent.
Although Immaculate has its share of wicked ladies, some of whom will get a share of the requisite horror-trope blood, the real evil belongs with the males, a cardinal (Giorgio Colangeli) and resident priest (Alvaro Morte), for instance, whose paternalism would turn Christ over more than once were He to have a grave.
Throughout, director Michael Mohan and writer Andrew Lobel have kept a sure hand showing the large assemblage of devout ladies strongly ruled by a small contingent of men who couldn’t possibly understand the struggles of women who have cloistered themselves from the normal joys and sorrows of those who embrace love and desire in a normal world.
Part of the visual success comes from cinematographer Elisha Christian’s grey-dark lens, which invests the glorious Italian country side and majestic estate with gloom. Helping immensely the demonic feel is Will Bates’s score, somber and ethereal at the same time.
Immaculate is a classic religious scare like The Exorcist but with less spectacle and more thematic heft. It uncovers the demands religion makes on the most devout while it successfully reminds me of my awe and fear of the black and white authority figures that ruled my primary schoolscape.
When Sister Alexia stood me up in sixth grade and called me a “dirty thing” for holding a girl’s hand, it took quite some time for me to realize it wasn’t the right call and even longer to see that sex was the demon those penguin dictators couldn’t control.
See Immaculate because it’s one of the year’s best entertainments with insights far beyond most horror films. See it as a training film for the nun experience.
Immaculate
Director: Michael Mohan (The Voyeurs)
Screenplay: Andrew Lobel (Dead or Alive)
Cast: Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria)
Run Time: 1h 29m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com