The film Immaculate (Immaculate) is the kind of horror film whose promising first minutes turn out, unfortunately, to be the best. The terrifying prologue sees a young nun trying to flee a convent in the middle of the night before being caught by a horde of malicious nuns. The fate reserved for the unfortunate woman takes your breath away — literally. The film, however, does not keep its sinister promises, the sequel revealing itself to be a poor variation of Rosemary’s Baby (Rosemary’s baby) in a convent.
The protagonist’s name is Sister Cecilia. We meet this young American when she has barely arrived in Italy (like the protagonist of Suspiria, by Dario Argento, another influence). The isolated convent where she ends up initially appears bucolic to her, but quickly, worrying nocturnal incidents put her on edge.
Then an apparent miracle occurs: it appears that Cecilia, although still a virgin, is pregnant.
Anyone who has ever seen even a few horror films, and not even necessarily the ones mentioned, will know what to expect at every dark twist and turn.
It’s a shame, because during the first half hour, Michael Mohan instills a rather captivating subdued gothic atmosphere, all old stone, candles and wrought iron. Above all, the director seems willing to let the moments of anguish expand into a slow-burn approach.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. For fear of testing the audience’s patience too much, or out of laziness, Mohan quickly came to multiply the shock effects (like the worn-out rope thing of the bird which crashes against a window), banking on startles rather than on a crescendo of tension.
Pseudo-transgressive
The plot follows a similar tangent, that is, from bad to worse. As mentioned, after an introduction suggesting jitters and shivers, it becomes big nonsense punctuated by pseudo-transgressive passages. And when we think that it cannot fall any lower, we reach a “second basement” of stupidity…
Revealed in the series Euphoria and most recently star of the hit romantic comedy Anyone But You (Anyone but you), Sydney Sweeney maintains a fairly admirable level of conviction given the increasingly preposterous situations she must play out. We think in particular of this interminable leak punctuated by bloody clashes even though its waters have burst for quite some time.
In this regard, we will recognize Immaculate effects gore very successful (and very plentiful). It remains that ultimately, the most frightening in Immaculateis that someone, somewhere, thought that this film would be scary.