In the opening sequence of Michael Mohan’s Immaculate, a beautiful young nun says her prayers and then, as quietly as she can, retrieves a set of keys from a creaky nightstand and creeps out the front door of her pictureseque Italian convent in the dead of night — only to be stopped by evil nuns and buried alive. It’s a solid opening, creepy and atmospheric, but also endemic of the picture’s problems: flashy and aesthetically impressive, but without much happening underneath.
Sydney Sweeney (who also produced) plays Sister Cecilia, a fish out of water from the jump — an American nun in Italy, barely speaking the language, but “called” to a church and adjoining facility that cares for aging nuns. She finds most of her fellow nuns to be either cold or mean (“You’re very sweet.” “Thank you.” “I didn’t mean that as a compliment”), but she’s there to do the lord’s work, and she settles into it.
All goes well until the day she throws up out of nowhere. Urine samples are taken, brows are furrowed, and when the convent doctor determines, “her hymen was intact – it’s never been touched,” well, you can guess from the title what happens next. Sister Cecilia is somehow pregnant, and it must be a Jesus-style miracle baby, which she must carry not only for the convent but for all mankind. “This is my calling,” explains the priest (Álvaro Morte). “And this,” he continues, placing his hand on her stomach, “This is yours.”
We’re all friends here, and we can be honest: the draw here is the idea of the very attractive Ms. Sweeney in what they used to call a “nunsploiation” picture, and Mohan occasionally teases at the idea; early on, when her full lips kiss the father’s ring in a big close-up, it writes a check the movie can’t quite cash. It’s not for lack of trying; the filmmaker frequently apes the look and sound of Italian exploitation cinema (and even trots out a pair of giallo gloves for a key sequence), which is both sly fun and an ill-advised reminder of the picture’s timidity.
Immaculate isn’t anything so subversive as nunsploitation (though it’s worth mentioning, to those for whom that’s an appealing idea, that Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta is on Hulu); this is something much more bland and conventional, a creaky doors and candlelight thriller, jolting the audience primarily with tired, boring jump scares.
That’s not to say that there isn’t anything to see here; the sound design is often unnerving, the cinematography (in both matters of lighting and composition) is impeccable, and it’s a wildly efficient piece of moviemaking — there’s not an ounce of fat on its lean 88 minutes. And the genre elements are mostly well-handled (those jump scares aside), up to and including some immensely satisfying kills in the home stretch.
Sweeney does some first-rate “waking up from a nightmare” acting, and some other good stuff besides. She’s convincingly haunted, and if it’s impossible to watch her work here without thinking of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, it’s at least worth noting that she is similarly effective at conveying a slowly, steadily mounting sense of paranoia and dread. In that aforementioned home stretch, she tosses off a reading of “Goddamnit” that’s so inspired and well-timed that it deserves particular recognition, and she truly goes for it in her final scene, which is played entirely in a harrowing, and unbreaking, close-up. But too much of Immaculate is just cosplaying other, better, weirder movies, and this one’s target audience may well spend its running time wishing it were made (and Sweeney were around) in a period when a picture like this could really go for broke.
B-
“Immaculate” is in theaters tonight.
