I admire the hell out of Michael Mohan’s filmmaking ethos, which is, through the sheer gravitational pull of Sydney Sweeney’s draw, to bring back all the genres that have been slowly and steadily phased out of risk-averse mainstream cinema in the post-financial crisis era. His first feature, The Voyeurs, was an admirably campy erotic thriller that made up for lack of narrative logic or sense with daring-do in aplomb – the kind of late-night viewing someone might have been delighted by on Cinemax in the days before internet porn, with all of its entrancing qualities and magnetic performances from its leads. If guilty pleasures existed, you’d probably find a few dozen Prime subscribers copping to enjoying it more than they might otherwise, as it acted as a rejoinder to the sexlessness of what the platform normally pushes to the women in its base. Immaculate, his latest, is most definitely a harder sell to that audience, but it’ll probably delight another. Mohan’s left the streaming world and partnered with Neon for what might seem like “elevated horror” but is, in practice, a trashy, hyper-fun romp through every blasphemy you can remember from Confirmation Class. If some religious groups retained theater-shuttering influence from back in the day, you might have seen protestors lining the streets at your local AMC, because this is gleefully offensive. Alas, they blew their wads on a well-considered and thoughtful movie like Last Temptation of Christ, and now there’s not too much left for them to do.
Secularization is generally the reason why Nunsploitation has fallen off the radar, with some notable exceptions like Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta (and Mohan’s work can’t totally compete with that on the quality or blasphemy fronts, but they’re both swell pictures). However, it has also upped the ante for those looking to make something other than an Exorcist riff – if you don’t go bold, your audience stays the fuck home and watches Conjuring 7: The Warrens Go Bananas. As such, Mohan and writer Andrew Lobel have found a particularly potent logline in the horrors of immaculate conception. Finding yourself gestating a child out of nowhere is a terrifying thing – after all, there’s a reason an angel has to tell Mary not to be afraid (and the appearance of biblical angels, as rendered in the Bible, doesn’t help matters given that you’re staring at a multi-eyed winged creature of impossible geometries) – and out of all possible candidates, Sister Cecilla (Sweeney) is perhaps the most and least prepared for this announcement. She’s well-equipped in that she is a chaste Woman of Virtue who, following a childhood accident, devoted her life to God at parishes and convents in the States. But she’s also vulnerable at the film’s start – her previous church closed its doors, and she’s recruited for a special job in Europe. She arrives in Italy knowing no one and can’t speak the language, yet she gears up to take her vows for a particularly challenging assignment. In essence, she’s helping run a retirement home for aged fellow nuns, with all the challenges that brings. She’s at a significant disadvantage, even if she has help from a kindly priest (Alvo Morte) and a fellow newbie nun, Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli), who has a bit more experience in worldly matters than she does.
Following some freaky shit involving masked nuns and one of the nails that was run through Christ’s palms on the cross, she settles into a decent routine of service and charity. No one is prepared for the reasons why, one morning, she pukes up her guts at the communal bath. A doctor is rushed in, tests are run, and the convent’s heads soon interrogate her – has she ever had sexual congress with a man? She hasn’t, obviously, and all that remains is a miracle: She’s been the target of God’s grace, having become the vessel for the savior’s return. She takes this with a pretty decent amount of stride – she’s happy, she guesses, to be of service, but she’s made uncomfortable by her new favored-nun status, as well as her sense that miracles like this… just don’t happen in this sort of way. “Why her?” ultimately gives way to “Why here?” and “Why is she not at a hospital?” and “Why does the convent employ an obstetrician?” and “Where’s the Popemobile?”
As this Child of God grows inside of her and the behaviors of those around her only grow stranger and stranger, she soon discovers there may be very Earthly answers to these heavenly queries and begins to untangle a conspiracy that would make Dan Brown blush.Sweeney really is a fantastic casting for this role – she’s able to sustain the requisite amount of genuine and unassuming piousness that keeps Cecilla from feeling like a Jesus Freak even as it emphasizes her naivety, and her horror with each successive revelation, as well as at what her body is going through, is resonant because of that commitment to her part. She’s a true believer and would probably make for an ideal Virgin Mary in temperament, should Eloi decide to slip back down to Earth for some pre-Revelations fun.
If there was one truly negative thing about The Voyeurs, it was that film’s length, and Mohan’s learned his lessons well – Immaculate is a beacon of brevity, lasting roughly 90 minutes before the credits roll, and much of its success can be attributed to its economy. It’s constantly teasing out the secrets that ultimately lie in the convent’s halls and in its catacombs below, but it never stops long enough to dole out exposition dumps beyond the most blatant of acknowledgments. This means he can focus on sustaining the vibe, with the scares punctuating moments of emotional significance, as the creeping dread of the invisible hand of whatever force is manipulating Cecilla slowly reaches a fever pitch. The production design is economical yet evocative, pushing on the recognizable signifiers of fervent Catholicism without managing to be excessively gaudy (it is, after all, a commitment to poverty that pervades a nunnery’s aesthetic).
And that sense of restraint is an asset once Mohan turns shit up to eleven in Immaculate’s final act. Sure, there’s plenty of high-genre silliness to be captivated by in the lead-up to its final minutes, with murders and fires and failing flashlights and so on, but when it reaches its conclusion, that prudence reasserts itself in a near-divine fashion. The goriest and grossest moments of the film are implied off-camera, with the sound design serving as a blunt-force object with which Mohan hammers home the sheer hideousness of what’s unfolding just out of frame. It’s audacious and metal as fuck – this is, after all, the same religion that “spiting your face” emerged from – and Immaculate is one hell of a time at the movies.