Sydney Sweeney (who also produced) plays Sister Cecilia, a fish out of water from the jump \u2014 an American nun in Italy, barely speaking the language, but \u201ccalled\u201d to a church and adjoining facility that cares for aging nuns. She finds most of her fellow nuns to be either cold or mean (\u201cYou\u2019re very sweet.\u201d \u201cThank you.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t mean that as a compliment\u201d), but she\u2019s there to do the lord\u2019s work, and she settles into it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, \u201cher hymen was intact – it\u2019s never been touched,\u201d 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. \u201cThis is my calling,\u201d explains the priest (\u00c1lvaro Morte). \u201cAnd this,\u201d he continues, placing his hand on her stomach, \u201cThis is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re 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 \u201cnunsploiation\u201d picture, and Mohan occasionally teases at the idea; early on, when her full lips kiss the father\u2019s ring in a big close-up, it writes a check the movie can\u2019t quite cash. It\u2019s 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\u2019s timidity.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Immaculate<\/em> isn\u2019t anything so subversive as nunsploitation (though it\u2019s worth mentioning, to those for whom that\u2019s an appealing idea, that Paul Verhoeven\u2019s Benedetta <\/em><\/a>is on Hulu<\/a>); this is something much more bland and conventional, a creaky doors and candlelight thriller, jolting the audience primarily with tired, boring jump scares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s not to say that there isn\u2019t anything to see here; the sound design is often unnerving, the cinematography (in both matters of lighting and composition) is impeccable, and it\u2019s a wildly efficient piece of moviemaking \u2014 there\u2019s 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 <\/em>satisfying kills in the home stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sweeney does some first-rate \u201cwaking up from a nightmare\u201d acting, and some other good stuff besides. She\u2019s convincingly haunted, and if it\u2019s impossible to watch her work here without thinking of Mia Farrow in Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em>, it\u2019s 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 \u201cGoddamnit\u201d that\u2019s 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<\/em> is just cosplaying other, better, weirder movies, and this one\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Immaculate” is in theaters tonight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/immaculate2-1024x512.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nB-<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n