In Immaculate, Sydney Sweeney covers her best known assets with the cloth and still manages to get knocked up. More importantly, at a tight 90 minutes, the movie is a deliciously dark and occasionally depraved horror-thriller that gets better as it goes along.
Early on, Sweeney appeared miscast. She’s a talented actress (look no further than “Euphoria”) but she seemed out of place as a devoted young nun who has seized an opportunity to live at an isolated convent. Basically, she looked and sounded like Sydney Sweeney in a nun costume. But 90 minutes later, you’ll be a believer. Blood-splattered, traumatized, and just fucking mad, Sweeney’s character Cecilia goes through quite an evolution in this Michael Mohan’s thriller; Sweeney herself brings the intensity and then some.
As for the movie, Immaculate delivers some satisfying body horror and effective scares, even if it can’t match Sweeney’s intensity. Mohan, who helmed the Sweeney-starring thriller The Voyeurs, offers up a lot to like throughout–though maybe not as much to love. When all is said and done, the movie is more conventional than Mohan thinks it is. The big reveal, while fine, isn’t as shocking or disturbing as you’d expect.
Nonetheless, given the film’s length, Immaculate feels lean and mean; the pace is brisk, and Mohan digs his claws in relatively quickly. Visually, the movie has bite, and the production design is, well, immaculate. If anything, the movie could have used more time to set the stage, explore more of the convent’s dark crannies, and delved deeper into the twisted and depraved.
But it still has plenty of depraved moments, especially as Immaculate enters the third act. The movie isn’t for the squeamish, and Mohan establishes a sense of dread and suspense that mounts as time goes on.
Immaculate doesn’t quite live up to its title, but a blood-drenched Sydney Sweeney and satisfying level of suspense makes this sexy nun thriller more than worth an “amen.” Amen!
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.