Director
Michael Mohan

Starring
Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte and Dora Romano


I’ve got to admit, after seeing Immaculate I truly believed that they had got 6 writers in a room where they all got to pitch one idea that would make it into the film. I was astonished to find that only one man was responsible for this diabolically bad, shambles of a film that is so full of unexplained elements and false directions that it’s hard to know what to make of it.

The premise isn’t a bad one; Sydney Sweeney is Sister Cecilia, a young, novice Nun who is sent to an Italian convent for elderly and dying Nuns. Once there, things start getting weird and (as you may have guessed from the title) Sister Cecilia finds herself with child, despite her adherence to her vow of chastity. Now was this conception another miracle of God, or something far more sinister?

It seems that the Director (Michael Mohan) had two options here; make a truly creepy, atmospheric horror film, which given the location and the subject matter, could have easily been achieved….or lean completely to the ridiculousness of it all and have a bit of fun, akin to a Blumhouse Production. Sadly, he elected to do neither, and instead make a truly confused film that wasn’t sure of what it wanted to be, and so instead relied FAR too heavily on grotesque imagery to garner a visceral response from its audience.

There were so many things that happened where I shrugged and assumed it would be explained over the course of the film, only to get to the end with no reference to it again. If someone can tell me why in two scenes we see Nuns with red fabric overing their faces, only for that never to pop again, I would be grateful. There are also elements of the 2018 remake of Suspiria (a truly terrible film) in some of the random cutaway scenes that don’t really seem to serve a purpose other than to fill in some of the screen time due to the lack of valid storyline.

Often with bad films, it doesn’t really bother me. Not every film can be great, which just makes you appreciate the good ones all the more. But I was quite physically annoyed with Immaculate because it has SO MANY elements that I love in a horror; a great location, a questionable religious influence and a couple of other plot points which I won’t mention as it will spoil the experience. It honestly had all the ingredients to be something great, including a more than decent performance by Sydney Sweeney (which is not at all surprising). But the execution and convoluted nature of the storyline absolutely ruined it. Days later, I’m still angry about the whole thing.

Hopefully in 20 years’ time someone else can come along and remake Immaculate and turn it into the film it rightly deserves to be.

Immaculate is in cinemas now.