Immaculate is the new film from filmmaker Michael Mohan, who had previously directed star Sydney Sweeney in the 2021 Amazon film The Voyeurs, which I have not seen. But it seems like Immaculate is quite different from that film. This is a horror film and a showcase for star Sweeney, who is having quite the moment right now, showing off her range between roles in projects like The White Lotus, Euphoria, plus films like the mega-hit romantic comedy Anyone But You and the not-mega-hit superhero film Madame Web. Immaculate sees Sweeney dipping her toe into the waters of the eponymous horror “scream queen”. And I think she pulls it off.

Meet Cecelia (Sweeney), a young woman who moves from suburban Detroit to a convent in the Italian countryside, to fulfill her “calling” to be a nun. But pretty much from the moment she arrives, she can tell people aren’t behaving normally. The mother superior type is outwardly mean to her from the beginning, and almost no one is particularly welcoming. One day, she finds that despite being a virgin, she has become pregnant, hence the title. And from there, she begins to learn more about what’s really going on here, and the sinister implications of it all.

I would say Immaculate is kind of inconsistent. The first two thirds are a bit slow and cliched, and there’s a lot of Rosemary’s Baby, and mother! here. It feels like Mohan and screenwriter Andrew Lobel are taking this way more seriously than they should. There’s also an over reliance on cheap jump scares happening, which seems like a strange choice since the backdrop of the chilly Italian countryside and the gothic nature of all the statues and religious imagery is used to unnerve the viewer from the get-go, to effective use.  

And once we get to the reveal where we discover what’s truly going on here, I actively rolled my eyes, but then thought, well, of course. It makes total sense that that’s where this was going, even if this twist is rather lame. However, from this point forward this film becomes all I knew it could be. The last 30 minutes or so of this film are bonkers, nutty, high energy and thrilling. Star Sydney Sweeney is able to finally kick this thing into high gear. And that almost makes everything that came before it, and all that predictability and the lameness of the twist, kind of worth it.

A quick word about Sydney Sweeney. I truly believe this film does not work if Sweeney does not have the kind of star power needed to sell this thing, and if we do not believe her character, and her performance, every step of the way. And she’s good enough for the majority. And then – without giving anything away – the last shot of this movie is a very long single take where she is called upon to do the best work of her career so far. It’s an ending that’s a bold choice creatively, and this seems like a conscious choice on Sweeney’s part – she’s a producer on the film. But it also gives me a lot of hope about where her career might go moving forward if she continues to choose strange, demanding projects like this to put her clout behind, in addition to the box-office draws. She might end up being a more interesting performer than I had originally realized.

Immaculate is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s got some interesting ingredients for the majority but is cliché ridden and doesn’t entirely work, and then once we get to the third act, it almost explodes off the screen. Sydney Sweeney continues to display her versatility as an actress, and this film could not be more different from the All-American girl-next-door thing attached to her persona before this. It also makes me think maybe a lot of her fans will be surprised by this, and not like it. The Catholic church is already very upset about this film, and NEON has released movie posters with scathing reviews from Catholic Twitter at the focal point, and I think that’s fantastic. It turns this into the kind of movie you really have to see, and I think you should see it, it’s a mild-to-medium good time.