I have these Friends here whose favorite genre of movie, the film they end up seeing six or seven times a year, I’m pretty sure, is nun horror. So when I saw that Sydney Sweeney had been sitting on script for a long, long time, I was interested. It didn’t end up working out to see it together, but I think the major point I need to get across to you is that this is not so much a nun horror film as it is a Sydney Sweeney film, which I mean in the best of ways. It hits some of the notes of a nun horror. There are nuns, obviously, and there’s some supernatural elements that seem adjacent to Catholic guilt, but mostly it’s not really. It’s more of an escape the convent movie. If Love Lies Bleeding is a movie made to trick lesbians into seeing a body horror movie, then Immaculate’s almost sold out audience at 21:30 on a Saturday night was definitely a movie made to trick Sydney Sweeney fans into watching a nun horror film.
At 90 minutes’ run time, about 95% of this movie’s scares are from the trailer, despite any reports to the contrary. You’d have to have really been living under a rock to not have most of the movie etched into your brain through the trailer sequence, which oddly doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of all the more lighthearted scenes during the day sequences. I’m obliged to say that the sexiest scene is probably an early scene in which Sweeney looks unsure about kissing the signet ring of the priest during her vows. Friend counters with “the bath,” and I think that’s when I said, “Actually, maybe even being chained to a wheelchair,” which was maybe a bridge too far, again?
Last comment on the movie is that it has some baby smashing and if you’re not interested in baby smashing you might not be interested in this one too much. I promise it’s not gratuitous or unnecessary, but also it totally will turn off some people. Also, after having seen the film, I can safely say that I totally don’t understand what the red-masked nuns’ deal is. Like, it seems like they’re evil, maybe? But then they only do shenigans some of the time and mostly they seem to kill themselves or just seem really unnerving from far away.
