Immaculate (2024): The Spectrum of Edgelord Behaviour
While Immaculate is an interesting concept on paper, it loses itself in the execution
It seems that every year we get a film or two that gets a certain “reputation”. Those films come with warnings of the material being explicit or over the line and some of these select movies get puff pieces with supposed “audience reactions” with fainting and vomiting. Usually the final product never lives up to this infamous reputation the project gains except for a few that surprisingly have. Immaculate is the 2024 version of this phenomena. All I saw from the SXSW reactions and the pre release reviews from other critics was how “extreme” this film was. The regular buzzwords we’ve come accustomed to were being slapped on this film that was being marketed as the next generation of Nunsploitation. In my opinion, this is just another one of those films that uses the idea of controversy to boost itself into the mainstream. Not to say that some of the content isn’t wild, but the film doesn’t live up to the ridiculous hype they built.
The simple plot of Immaculate follows Sydney Sweeney as a nun who moves to a convent and discovers that things aren’t as they seem. She miraculously becomes pregnant and is forced by her new family to see the experience through and have the baby. I’ll get out what I liked about the film before I go deep into why it simply doesn’t work. For one Sydney Sweeney gives one of her better performances. Her filmography so far has been super hit or miss with more being bad than good and thankfully this one was a highlight. As well like most of these artsy horror films, it’s shot really well and there are some interesting uses of cinematography, more specifically in the second half of the film. The last notable positive element i’ll give it is that it’s definitely trying to say something when it comes to the current discussion on the right of women to their body. While it only really takes the discussion half way and could have done more with it, I respect that it at least tried. The film is somewhat passable, but if the trailers didn’t interest you, I wouldn’t recommend it.
The biggest issue for me with the film is the identity of the story and the execution of the pacing and tone. The film seems like two distinctive films with the first half being boring, slow and monotonous and the second half being wild, over the top and vibe I can only describe as edgelord behaviour. The last 10 minutes of the film are definitely thrilling and interesting, but the film really isn’t worth watching to get to that wild conclusion. The film takes at least 30 or 45 minutes to get interesting and the complete runtime is 85 minutes. I would have been so down for a balls to the wall nun horror film, but Immaculate can’t decide if it wants to be a dull repetitive jump scare flick that we see dozens of from studios like Blumhouse or a film that tries to hard to be as edgy and unforgiving as it can possibly fathom to the point where it becomes annoying. The film might have needed a couple more script revisions because it definitely feels like something written a decade ago that Sweeney decided to dust off and try out for the hell of it. This film totally would have worked a decade ago before the elevated horror scene took off, but in 2024 it feels like it’s trapped in between two distinct types of horror. Those two very dominant styles being the cheap studio shocks and the mindful and creative art chillers. The film probably would have been a hit for me if it decided to go with either one and take it to eleven, but it decided to ultimately be a fence sitter which led to a lukewarm film.
Immaculate is a film that by plot alone is something we’ve seen before but would have been interesting to explore in an artsy fashion. The film has a good performance and is shot well, but because it couldn’t decide what type of horror film it truly wanted to be, it fell flat. If the film peaked your interest in anyway, I would recommend checking out when it inevitably makes its way on a streamer like Prime Video, but if you had no intention on seeing it, I would recommend not watching it. I usually love telling people to check out wild films that might expand their horizons artistically, but this one ain’t it. NEON’s roster for the rest of the year looks pretty stacked and there’s for sure excited for and will probably love one particular title, so their year is not a lost cause. Sydney Sweeney has a bright future in the world of acting, but this film doesn’t work and can only be described as “edgelord behaviour”.
The Rating