Immaculate (2024)

Now I did quite like the underlying premiss of this take on the immaculate conception but boy, the execution and the acting are something completely different. "Cecilia" (Sydney Sweeney) is taken to a beautifully rustic convent where she is welcomed with open arms. Everyone says how pretty and blessed she is, and this rather flies in the face of her natural humility. Imagine her shock, then, when she is summoned to the cardinal (Giorgio Colangeli) and made to undergo some rather personal medical tests that reveal.... Well that'd be telling, and for a while Michael Mohan manage to sustain a little interest in just what is going on amidst the peace and quiet of this ancient sanctuary. Sadly, though, the story swiftly goes way off the rails and leaves us exposed to Sweeney's limited talents and an excess of hysteria that involves a chicken, a dimly lit catacomb and a dastardly plan that puts enormous strain on our increasingly inventive and resilient novice. As "Yoda" might have profoundly said, "loads of screaming and ketchup do not an horror film make" and after about half an hour here the writing is on the wall (perhaps the best place for it?) and my interest wained. This is a tough genre to keep interesting - there are few ideas that have not been done to death before. This has the germ of originality, but sadly it's a very small germ.

Passable.

I think I wanted more from 'Immaculate', though what's provided is fairly watchable to be honest. Visually it looks neat, too. Sydney Sweeney's performance is as good as expected, the rest of the cast are all competent; Álvaro Morte the standout of them.

The run time does fly by, I kinda felt watching that there wasn't really a middle - just one long build-up to the main event at the end. Speaking of which, 'the' scene at the conclusion made me smirk, the problem is that it most certainly was not supposed to; Cecilia's screams immediately sounded like that "best cry ever" meme* to me, I couldn't help but smile, I'm sorry.

*never knew the backstory to that clip until searching for it here, it's not quite so amusing now to be honest. awks.

All in all, I'd narrowly class this as a film worth watching. I almost got to see it by myself in an empty cinema, though a group of two inexplicably arrived like 30-45 minutes into the 90 minutes! That's gotta hurt.

It's just passable and that's it.

You might like it, if this is the first horror movie of your life - otherwise skip it.

Immaculate brings nothing new to the table. There is not a single original idea here, almost every scene or idea has been done before in countless other movies. It copied everything that has been done before and did it without soul. Two exceptions though: First, the very last scene was somewhat intense but the conclusion did not make sense in my opinion. Second, the visuals are well made and often beautiful.

Being this unimaginative, the movie could have increased its entertainment value going the obvious route and show some nudity - Sydney Sweeney and the other nuns have lots to offer in this regard. There is none though, except some slightly transparent bathing gowns. I mean, if you can't write properly, at least give us some other excitement.