Religious horror is nothing new. Ghosts, spirits, and demons have taken over homes and bodies on the big screen, necessitating many exorcisms by innumerable priests that result in endless sequels. It seems that audiences are particularly obsessed with Catholicism and all it has to offer media about this paranormal fight between good and evil.
Immaculate, directed by Michael Mohan, was recently released to theaters, a new addition to the ever-growing collection of religious horror films. Capitalizing on Sydney Sweeney’s current It Girl/sex symbol status, the film places her center frame in a definitionally desexualized role: a nun.
Although the subject matter is familiar, Sweeney’s role as Sister Cecilia isn’t. When we first see her in the film, she’s sitting behind a desk in her light gray nun’s robes, her hair tucked into a long cap. She explains to Italian immigration agents that she was invited to join a small convent in the Italian countryside. She hasn’t quite learned Italian yet, and the agents begrudgingly converse with her in English. The agents look through Cecilia’s belongings, one remarking about her young age after which the other agent takes a long, lascivious look at her and says—in Italian—that her choice and lifestyle is a waste. These agents symbolically undress Cecilia, and the audience, who have watched Sweeney in Anything But You or Euphoria or The White Lotus—which in some cases have reduced her to small, colorful bikinis and voluminous, perfectly-styled hair—can relate. We can project ourselves onto Immaculate’s agents, seeing her body as an object to be performed.
When Cecilia arrives at the convent, there’s a short sequence that flashes between close-ups of her limbs and the black nun’s robes sliding smoothly into place over them, replacing her original gray robes. After so long in a spotlight that casts her as a bombshell, Sweeney’s body is not something for our consumption.
Sweeney’s performance is the best part of a film that regurgitates a plot of cult religion. She’s covered in blood, she screams so hard you think her vocal cords might shred to pieces, she engages with the world in a smart and kind and powerful way. She does all this as a character who’s devoid of sexuality, whose allure to the other characters is her body as a holy vessel rather than a product for debauched gratification. This movie asks its audience to revel in the strength innate in horror final girls, not in their sexual vulnerability.
For as new of a role Sister Cecilia is for Sweeney, the film doesn’t match her scream queen potential. It lacked the courage to show scenes that made my stomach sink to my feet, despite its evil turn of events. While I appreciate the tight, 89-minute thrill ride, Immaculate could have benefited from time to develop its antagonists, a group of zealots whose devotion twists into something unrecognizable and inhumane. I was hoping for the film to draw out their perversion and make the most of Sweeney’s ability to pull us along with her in a struggle to survive.
Immaculate makes for a compelling outlier in Sweeney’s filmography so far, and for the sake of the horror genre, I hope it’s more than just an exception in her career.
