REVIEW: Despite issues, ‘Immaculate’ has good horror intensity

Sometimes, it’s better to just stay in Detroit.

The protagonist of “Immaculate” is Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney), a young woman from Michigan who finds herself in Italy. A nun, Cecilia has journeyed to Europe after receiving an invitation to join a remote convent where sisters are given end-of-life care. It’s difficult work, but driven by religious duty, she embraces it.

Her routine of devoted service is interrupted, though, when she becomes pregnant, despite being a virgin. She is then treated by the convent as if she is the next Virgin Mary. Already uneasy over the attention, the situation turns more dire as Cecilia notices dark and nefarious activity by convent leaders.

Right off the bat, a positive with “Immaculate” is that it wasn’t another exorcism or demonic possession type movie. Those seem to have dominated religious-themed horror films for the last decade, with recent examples including 2021’s “The Unholy” and 2018’s “The Nun,” which spawned a sequel.

Fortunately, this picture is a bit more grounded. Rest assured, there’s still spooky stuff going on in the flick, but it’s not another trip down the overly traveled Catholic Exorcism Lane. Instead, we get a very sinister and cult-like convent that the protagonist has to deal with.

As for the movie overall, it has a mix of ups and downs, but fortunately, the pros outweigh the cons, although most of the pros come in the second half. For the first two acts, the picture is a pretty standard horror situation where a person comes into a place that they’re excited about until things go south.

In this case, those first two acts offer a mix of some solid, clever moments of creepiness that puts a viewer on edge, and more standard horror tropes that cheapen the experience a bit. Regardless, the filmmakers do a good enough job building up to the finale, that it holds a person’s interest for what’s going to unravel, despite some lulls.

When that third act arrives, it provides some really entertaining thrills and intense moments. It goes to gnarly places, and it makes one wish the rest of the film had more of the attitude and the edge that the final third contained. What’s offered, though, is still good, just not great.

What’s not in question is Sweeney’s performance, which is great. She manages to portray her character’s evolution over the film quite nicely, with Cecilia starting off as a dedicated but nervous nun who’s in a new country to a woman anxious over her predicament, and finally her darker more primal side that’s shown in the latter part of the movie. Sweeney pulls all of it off very well.

The supporting characters, meanwhile, could have been a bit stronger. The cast is alright, but the other players in the movie deserved to be more fleshed out. Somewhat making up for it is the film’s look, with fine cinematography and nice set design which all worked in creating a good space for eerie situations.

“Immaculate” has a superb lead performance and a radical third act, while the rest of the film is alright. It’s certainly above average and horror fans should give it a chance, but it definitely could have taken a bigger swing for the fences with more developed characters and wilder sequences earlier. It comes in at a 3.25 out of 5.

Author: Matthew Liedke

Journalist and film critic in Minnesota. Graduate of Rainy River College and Minnesota State University in Moorhead. Outside of movies I also enjoy sports, craft beers and the occasional video game. View all posts by Matthew Liedke