‘Immaculate’ Misconception: A Bleeding Mess of Holy Horror
A nun-in-training prays to the Immaculate Mother Mary. Then she immediately steals keys from an ailing Mother Superior to escape the convent in panicked fashion. At the front gate, she struggles to unlock it with the keys as four nuns from the convent approach the fleeing young sister with menacing intent. She desperately unlocks the gate, but a separate chain keeps it bound. The young sister tries to squeeze through, but the four nuns grab her by the leg and break it with supernatural strength.
Fade to blackness.
The nun-let awakens in a coffin (with a match?) and is indeed buried alive. She lights repeated matches as she cries alone in the darkness.
“Immaculate” title caption.
An inspector searches Sydney Sweeney’s (Euphoria, Reality) personal belongings. She is a nun, Sister Cecelia. She asks how long the search will take. The Officials tell her she’s young to be a nun. “What a waste.” another one says in Italian.
We get a nice countryside view of Italy.
She is brought to the same gate as the opening victim nun-in-training. And into the giant palace beyond.
An old and young nun argue in front of her in Italian which she doesn’t understand. One ornery nun understands English and mistranslates slightly. She leads Cecelia to her room and explains this place has been around since 1692 and is for elderly nuns before they go to heaven.
She’s warned to play along with the dying nun’s delusions in this place. And is led to a room of singing nuns.
The interpreter nun confides you haven’t taken your vows yet. You can still run for it.
While going to the rest room, sitting on a toilet, another nun comes in by the window for a smoke. No boundaries.
She puts on her full nun outfit, readying herself to take the final vows. She accepts the vows and kisses the bishop’s ring. They then feast in a giant cross shaped dinning hall. She talks with a handsome priest. She tells him “The opportunities back in the States…I just didn’t feel that’s what God saved me for.“
She recounts a story of being trapped under water and under a sheet of ice and touching the ice up from the submerged point of view and screaming.
Cecelia washes her face after dinner and opens the large metallic doors. She goes to the inner church and finds a devoted worshipper spread on the floor, face down, flatly, praying. Cecelia approaches from behind. She taps the person on the back and with a man’s voice, red stocking over his face. Cecelia turns around and runs into the elderly nun (the one who Cece didn’t understand her Italian earlier). She gives her a sacred object — an original nail retrieved from Saint Helena, Mother of Constantine — that she retrieved from Jerusalem that was hammered into Christ. “Suffering is love.” the Italian nun musters in English. Cecelia passes out with the weight of what she feels.
Next she’s in a confessional. She confesses but suddenly the one hearing her gets further and further away, fading into dream darkness. She says hello down a dark, empty confessional booth. Spooky. Suddenly hands reach behind her, pulling her backwards. It’s the four nuns from opening attack. They all have red masks and start touching Cecilia’s face. Then stab her with the cross in the heart.
She wakes up in bed and a spooky nun stares at her from the doorway by her room. She turns on the lights and the mystery nun disappears.
The next day at nun school, the lead, old nun says “Most do not have the spiritual fortitude to stay and the year will not be easy.” Cecelia asks her nun friend what the lead nun is saying in English. Her smarmy nun friend translates condescendingly, “Oh you know, God is love. Love is great.” Cecelia and her smarmy nun friend are told they’ll report to a stricter, younger nun. “Looks like her vibrator batteries ran out.” slyly cuts the smarmy nun friend. Cecelia says what? She didn’t hear it.
Next, nun training begins. How to treat the sick and dying. How to keep knives sharp to kill live chickens mercifully.
Isabelle, the strict nun, stares at Cecelia during outdoor laundry hangups. Then vanishes.
Cecelia sleeps in her bed, zero exploitation is putting me to sleep. Dario Argento’s rolling over in his grave and the guy’s not even dead yet. Then a masked intruder with scissors ascends beside her bed. She turns and a nun stabs her but, no, only cuts a lock of her hair.
This nutter lady says “Saints, we all adore you.” Cecelia hasn’t done anything yet. But Cecelia walks this crazy dying woman back to her bed. She looks at the lady’s feet and finds a cross burned onto them.
They’re bathing now in long gowns. But her smarmy friend has some nipples showing. Nice. Cecelia is uncharacteristically restrained in what we see. Her friend mentions she was with a boy, but they hit each other. She joined the convent to live a peaceful life. Free of misery. Cecelia throws up… morning sickness?
Cecelia stares out a window. Another mystery nun walks outside. Just then a bird bloodies its head flying directly into the window. Jump scare flick. The old Italian nun asks Cecelia to join the attractive priest and the Cardinal is there, smoking pensively. They interrogate her. Has she broken chastity? Yes, or no? Have you been with a man? Honestly?
No father.
Dr. Gallo checked her hymen when she entered. It was intact. (Dr. Gallo’s a lucky hypothetical fella, just saying).
They dust off the jelly belly device to check for a baby, the… uh… ultrasound, that’s it! They’re taking this very seriously. And, indeed, a baby resides inside of Cecelia. Hymen unblemished. Indeed, this a miracle. Hallelujah?
They perform a ceremony of the Mother Virgin Holy Mary with Cecelia on stage as Virgin Mary. The choir sings for her.
We skip to the vomiting of the second trimester, but a bloody adult tooth comes out. She appears at mealtime, and everyone stands. She’s the second Virgin Mary.
She floats in the water with pregnant belly and nipples behind a wet white gown. Suddenly a maniac girl drowns her outta nowhere. She states, “It was supposed to be me!“
Cecelia asks to see a real doctor and wants to know what it means, “supposed to be me.” Good question.
Cecelia walks in the courtyard. “Bless you Good Mother.” Next, she looks up and two red masked Nuns’ stare down at her from above ominously.
A few moments later and another nun drops from a window above the courtyard committing suicide. Her face is bloody and demolished.
The nuns carry her swank coffin to a grave. Smarmy nun tells Cecelia that “God has nothing to do with your pregnancy.” Her feisty, smarmy Italian nun friend explodes. “Cecelia is pregnant somehow. Now there’s a suicide. Everyone of you is full of bullshit.” (Preach!)
She tells the handsome priest, “Get your hands off me. I know when a man is lying. Let go of me!“
Several men carry her away.
Later that night Cecelia is alone in bed. The picture of the Virgin Mary falls off it’s chain and a message is written on the wall. It’s a bible passage from Corinthians. She grabs her trusty bible to decode “For Satan himself often masquerades as an Angel of Light.”
She travels through the church looking for her smarmy friend. Down the dark eerie candle lit corridors she searches.
She goes to the outdoor courtyard and hears her smarmy friend in the dark screaming in
Rebellion. “Let me go!“
The red masked evil nuns have a knife and cut out smarmy nun’s tongue. Cecelia backs away from the keyhole. And a lunatic grabs her and hands her a trinket of her own hair. Then warns her to stay away.
The next day Cecelia wakes up and has what appears at first sight to be a bloody miscarriage. The handsome priest drives her to a hospital.
A freaky nun plows her face into the bloody sheets of the Second Coming. Praying into it. But alas, under the bed is s bloody carcass of a chicken. Cecelia tricked them to aid an escape attempt.
They call the handsome priest who tells the driver to stop. Her escape attempt is foiled. She jumps out and runs across the field. She is caught and dragged home.
Nudity. She is told to wash herself off, removing the chicken’s blood.
She is chained to a wheelchair and told she is safe. Also, she is told they found DNA of Jesus on the nail they have supposedly from the Crucifixion. This reminds me of Revelations (2001) with Udo Kier tapping on the glass of a clone of the Second Coming. But it’s not gotten that corny, so I’ll digress. (Speaking of Udo Kier, he is in a much better biblical horror epic, Meggido: the Omega Code 2, which is an unofficial third part of the original The Omen series when you think about it, but I’ll double digress now. Sorry, my mind wanders to better movies when I get bored.)
But anyway, Cecelia walks down a hall with miscarried babies in glass specimen jars. She tells the handsome priest he’s playing God. And tells him no. They burn crosses onto both her feet. Ouch. Branded.
Third trimester. Cecelia is kept captive and alive and goes to confession. I think it’s them who should confess. She pulls off a fingernail, ala Brundelfly, for no specific reason.
Cecelia’s stomach is huge and moving as a church choir of nuns sings in the night for her “blessed baby.” Cecelia grabs a cross and smashes the lead nun’s head with it. Bloodying her head. She proceeds to smash her face with a bloody cross to smithereens. Amen!
She walks in the hall and her water breaks on the floor. She then sneaks up behind a priest and strangles him with a rosary. (What next? Thurible as a mase? Drowning someone in holy water? I’m all clichéd out. I mean, I’m having flashbacks to Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving of themed murders here.)
Anyhoo, she steals the nail that was used against JC and walks around like a maniac ready to kill.
She pours ethanol all over the clone lab and handsome priest approaches, but Cecelia threatens to burn herself. She struggles and shuts priest behind the door and burns him alive. But he’s alive still and busts open the door.
Cecelia hides in the catacombs. Getting a Barbarian vibe momentarily. Suddenly she sees the greening corpse of her smarmy friend. Seems quick to be discolored so soon. Cece eventually reaches a natural way out of the catacombs in the wall. She almost exits but burned priest drags her back inside. He pins her down and rips her dress off with his teeth around her belly and plans a c-section.
She stabs him in the neck with the nail.
She crawls out of the cave with the amateur c-section like it’s not a serious issue. Pretty sure you’d pass out without anesthetic. But OKAY…
She then proceeds to scream for 2-minutes solid with blood on her face, the blood of the dead priest. She then bites her own umbilical cord like a freak. She then takes a massive rock and kills her child. Intense acting. We get it, you’re VERY pro choice!
Fin.
Immaculate Uppers:
The ending is an upper! I’ll give this movie that. Sydney Sweeny is a good actor. Like all actors who get too known for one thing, to avoid type casting, they immediately seek out the opposite to show ‘range.’ So, for this year’s ‘IT girl’ (could make a cool horror title in and of itself), she goes literally ‘nun.’
Unironically, this movie is brisling to condemn the church. Cecelia, when forced to conceive evilly for a false church within the church, (presuming the Pope himself didn’t order this conception! Big If, I know…), this movie shouts “I WILL NOT GET PREGNANT FOR YOU, CHURCH!” And “I WILL KILL MY IMMACULATELY CONCEIVED CHILD TO PROVE MY POINT AGAINST YOU!” Fine. That’s a big upper for a lot of ladies out there (I suppose?) so I’ll slot this as an upper. We’ll pretend it’s an upper at least. Lol. Babies! Psht! Who needs them, right?! Best to fantasize about straight up killing them like a barbarian with a rock. Such intense anger and images are the real public service! Not organized religion!
Immaculate Downers:
The intrigue of why she is pregnant is interesting for a few minutes. It kind of made me wonder for a while what they had in mind. Ultimately, I watched Immaculate within a month or so of another very similar movie, The First Omen. I feel like between Immaculate and The First Omen we almost got a good movie on this conspiracy against nuns, forcing them to have babies… Second Coming thing. But both are severely lacking in the script department. The First Omen has a better conspiracy, and explanation as to why the church was trying to manufacture a Second Coming, but a terribly dull ending. Immaculate has many dull moments and a high intensity ending which does not absolve all the dullness.
Sydney Sweeny is a good actress. Not great. Good. She is watchable, mostly. Teasing doesn’t hurt but this movie is severely lacking in tease. It is an exploitation movie without being an exploitation movie. It hates the religion, specifically the Catholic Church (like all horror movies do these days). That’s fine. There’s plenty to complain about. But it is very reluctant to exploit the hot chick element that was right there, and for that, it disappoints.
Overall, The First Omen is a better movie. Watch it instead, and then just tack on the ending of Immaculate as a third act out of nowhere and together, as a Franken-movie, you get kind of a satisfying emotional experience.
Directed by: Michael Mohan
Written by: Andrew Lobel
Produced by: David Bernad, Jonathan Davino, Teddy Schwarzman, Sydney Sweeney
Cinematography by: Elisha Christian
Edited by: Christian Masini
Music by: Will Bates
Special Effects by: Baburka Production
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli, Giorgio Colangeli, Dora Romano, Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Language: English, Italian
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 29min
Studio: Black Bear,Fifty-Fifty Films, Middle Child Pictures
Distribution: Neon,Elevation Pictures
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