The Sydney Sweeney-starring Immaculate is a tense, straightforward horror-thriller that passionately tackles religious fanaticism and female autonomy.
Director Michael Mohan, reuniting with Sweeney following 2021 thriller The Voyeurs, crafts a compact little thriller that benefits from a tight runtime and a sense of escalating madness that leads to a bloody finale that you won’t be forgetting in a while.
When looked at as a “horror film” per se, the film is a little bit bumpy. Scares, relying on familiar sequences and sound-driven jumps, aren’t all that integral to the story and, in retrospect, feel a little bit tacked on.
A lean on genre formula may make the film more marketable, but I would have preferred the film expand the screenplay, focusing more on the mystery, more on the suspense, and drawing our lead character with a bit more depth than she’s given.
Sweeney, also a producer here, is quite good in the role – from wide-eyed innocence to exhausting “scream queen” breaking point.
It may not be up to the standards of some of its clear influences – such as Suspiria and Rosemary’s Baby – but Immaculate is a decent slice of wince-inducing, dare I say it, fun, nunsploitation.
