‘Immaculate’: SXSW Review

Dir: Michael Mohan. US. 2024. 88mins

It’s hard to imagine anything slowing down Sydney Sweeney. In short order, the Euphoria star has established herself as a generational talent on television’s White Lotus, as an indie darling in Reality, and as a rom-com force in the box office smash Anyone But You,which she also produced. Her second producing credit, the bland, unoriginal horror flick Immaculate, in which she plays a nun facing dark horrors at an Italian convent, is her shakiest showcase to date.

A dull, predictable affair

Michael Mohan’s latest feature premieres at SXSW (his first, the streamer title The Voyeurs, also starred Sydney Sweeney) with hopes of wooing genre fans, but it’s difficult to imagine Immaculate having a prayer when it rolls out in multiple territories later this month. It simply doesn’t distinguish itself from other, more accomplished religious horror films such as The Nun series or The Devils. Its only chance of being the type of safe box office bet the genre has become lies with Sweeney’s emerging starpower, despite US distributor Neon’s heft where it releases on March 22 at the start of its global rollout.

Sweeney (who previously starred in Mohan’s 2021 thriller The Voyeurs) plays young and impressionable Sister Cecilia, arrving in Italy with deep devotion but no grasp of the language. She has ventured from Detroit, Michigan to a convent for infirm and dying nuns. A survivor of a childhood accident where she fell through the ice, she believes she is fated by God for a greater plan. Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), a smokeshow, does not dissuade her from that optimism. 

Mohan doesn’t wait long to drop the other shoe: Sister Cecilia, a virgin, discovers she is pregnant through immaculate conception. It’s a miracle until it becomes a nightmare. There are grave secrets lurking in the picturesque church known for possessing a spike from Jesus’ crucifixion. The potentially dangerous patients often wander the halls at night. Mysterious nuns shrouded in red masks appear from the shadows. The stern Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi) is a cold, by-the-book woman far too devoted to her vows. Mother Superior (Dora Romano) totes a suspicious red file bearing Sister Cecilia’s picture. It’s enough for Sister Cecilia to question their authority – especially when Father Sal and the church’s other men warn her against visiting a hospital. 

Despite the tantalising set up, Immaculate is a dull, predictable affair, composed of far too many inconsequential jump scares in lieu of sturdy storytelling: a bird crashes into a window, a fingernail falls off, a tooth is lost. The blunt editing, visually flat and aurally excessive, doesn’t help matters. Nor does the lack of tension or tone. There is little exposition, too. Does Sister Cecilia have any contact with her family? Who are those creepy nuns walking around in the red masks? We’re not even sure what decade the story takes place in. Lobel’s half-baked screenplay would rather not grant those basic answers. The film in general would prefer to ape 1970s horror music and rely on low-hanging frights than craft memorable characters.  

Even with the film’s underwhelming execution, you can spot what possibly drew Sweeney to the project. This story is about a woman’s right to choose, and the ways the church has often taken away that freedom. Catholicism’s patriarchy carries out these moralistically flawed edicts, and other women, in the form of nuns, support it. As Sister Cecilia’s roommate says, “I know when a man is lying to me.” Unfortunately Mohan doesn’t graduate from that basic observation. He relies on a committed Sweeney to do the heavy lifting, but there’s only so much writhing and screaming the actress can give. She is fighting a losing battle with a narrative that overshadows her visceral physicality and unbridled lungs.

By the time the film develops a perceptible pulse, it’s nearly over. The final tiny freakout is overly sanitised, relying on tawdry visual effects and isolated shocks of violence to demand an unearned angst on the part of the viewer. It’s a losing cause because Immaculate isn’t even passable. It’s God awful.