Immaculate review: Sydney Sweeney shines in this bumpy nunsploitation horror

Sydney Sweeney is committed to Immaculate. We know this because we’ve now heard the story of how long she held onto hopes that she could play this character, how she waited a decade until she was famous and influential enough to not only star in the film, but to get it made as a producer. But it’s not just an exercise in flexing her Hollywood clout. As audiences learned at the film’s SXSW premiere earlier this month, you can feel it on the screen. Sweeney not only wants to be a Scream Queen. She revels in it.

That sense that Sweeney is luxuriating in the blood-drenched moment, that she’s diving headlong into it just as she did in the most savage moments of her breakthrough performance on Euphoria, is a big part of what makes Immaculate work. And make no mistake, Immaculate does work, especially if Catholic horror is a particular fascination of yours. Uneven and sometimes predictable though it is, it’s a film that knows how to push the buttons of its particular subgenre, and you get the sense that any number of stars might have been able to carry it in the right context. You also get the sense, from the very first moment she’s onscreen to the unforgettable final frame, that none of those other possible stars could have carried it quite as well as Sweeney.

Sweeney is Cecilia, a devout young woman who has, from a very young age, been committed to the idea that her life belongs to God. So she opts to become a nun, and lucky for her, is admitted to a prestigious Italian convent whose purpose is tending to nuns on their deathbeds. There, she will take her final vows, and begin her life as a Bride of Christ.

What Cecilia doesn’t know, of course, is that the convent is full of secrets— secrets that the pleasant Father (Alvaro Morte) overseeing the place can’t suppress; secrets that her fellow novitiate Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) isn’t afraid to speak up about; secrets stretching back decades, or longer. Soon, Cecilia finds herself not just lost in those secrets, but mysteriously and miraculously pregnant. But is her baby the first real immaculate conception in 2,000 years, or something darker?

Watch any number of other Catholic horror films, and you’ll find a pacing and cadence similar to what screenwriter Andrew Lobel and director Michael Mohan are exploring here. The pure young initiate arrives, strange things start happening, and the scares keep building until the eventual reveal of What’s Really Going On. There’s nothing wrong with this formula—we keep using it, and watching it, for a reason—but Immaculate’s execution is not always on point.

The jump scares, wound up with poise by Mohan and editor Christian Masini, usually work on a basic, thrill-a-minute level, but after a while, you start to notice that only a select few are really adding anything to the story. Sometimes it’s a revelation, a peeling back of part of the veneer holding the convent’s darkness in check. Other times it’s a bird flying against a window for no other reason than the script needed a scare on that page, I guess. Jump screams and creepy imagery are fine for their own sake, of course, but as Immaculate takes its time getting to the meat of its story, it’s easy to question how much of the horror is just there to kill not nuns, but screen time.

But let’s get to the reason we’re all really here: This is the Sydney Sweeney Pregnant Nun Movie, and if you’re buying a ticket, there’s a good chance that’s the reason why. Dodgy jump scares and bumpy plotting aside, Sweeney is fantastic in this film. She knows exactly the image she cuts in the public eye at this moment, exactly how to wield it in a horror film, and exactly how to turn in a committed and fearless performance as a woman forced to question everything she thought to be the bedrock of her spiritual life. Even when the plot’s not doing her any favors, Sweeney is willing this film to work, wringing every compelling drop of energy she can out of each frame. Being a Scream Queen is not just about the right material and the right look. It’s about commitment, about understanding that the only way to make wild horror plots work is to dive into them and never let up. Sweeney, horror fans rejoice, absolutely gets it. She is the white-hot core of this movie, she knows it, and she makes it pay off.

That means that Sweeney alone is reason enough to dig into Immaculate and its world of secret sins and often surprising gore. Even without its star, it’s a solid enough horror endeavor, but with Sweeney, it’s compulsively, thrillingly watchable.

Immaculate opens in theaters on March 22