Suffering is love.
Immaculate is a 2024 religious psychological horror film from director Michael Mohan (The Voyeurs) and writer Andrew Lobel. It stars and was produced by Sydney Sweeney and was released on March 22nd, 2024.
Sweeney plays Sister Cecilia Jones, who joins a mysterious convent in Italy. Shortly after, Cecilia becomes pregnant despite never having sexual relations, leading to the convent seeing her as the next Virgin Mary. Soon, however, Cecilia learns there is a darker conspiracy behind the conception that she has become part of.
This film provides examples of:
- Advertised Extra: Simona Tabasco appears in marketing and promos
alongside Sydney Sweeney, but she appears in the first five minutes and is implied to be killed offscreen before never being seen or mentioned again. - Agony of the Feet:
- In the opening scene, Sister Mary gets her ankle broken by being snapped through the front gates when she tries to escape.
- After Cecilia fails to escape the convent, her feet are branded with crosses to ensure that she will not try to leave again before her pregnancy is up. This comes back to bite the villains as this isn't quite damaging enough to keep her disabled, by the climax she's healed up enough that she can walk well enough while gritting her teeth in the pain and Heroic Willpower does the rest.
- The Antichrist: It is all but outright stated that this is what Cecilia gives birth to in the end. The child can be heard making an inhuman growling sound and is barely visible in one shot but appears red and horned. Cecilia proceeds to kill it.
- Artistic License – Traditional Christianity: The film makes the common mistake of conflating the Immaculate Conception (the Catholic dogma holding that Mary was conceived free from original sin) and the Virgin Birth (Jesus having no human father, being conceived by an act of the Holy Spirit). Although given the convent is actually a renegade cult within the Catholic Church its possible they simply don't follow the mainstream interpretation.
- Asshole Victim: Mother Superior, Cardinal Franco Merola, and Father Sal Tedeschi, the main conspirators of the convent, all meet grisly ends courtesy of Cecilia.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Father Sal Tedeschi initially presents himself as kind and welcoming to Cecilia, hiding his true sinister nature until the very end.
- Bittersweet Ending: Cecilia kills the three heads of the convent and the Antichrist after she gives birth to it, but she will be forever mentally and physically scarred by the experience.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The pious and gentle protagonist Cecilia has Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold. Her Only Friend at the convent, Gwen, has dark hair. The bitter Isabelle, who hates Cecilia because it was "supposed" to be her who carried the Second Coming, has red hair.
- Buried Alive: This happens to sister Mary in the first five minutes of the movie.
- Death Glare: One of the nuns gives Cecilia a vicious one after Cecilia says they should try to escape the convent.
- Devil, but No God: Played with, and discussed in an unusual way for this subgenre. The convent intends to create the Second Coming, so of course they believe it's the will of God. When it actually happens, Cecilia comes to believe (apparently accurately) that the product is the Antichrist. This would seem to be a straight example of the trope, but when Cecilia confronts him, Cardinal Merola makes the pretty good point of saying "If this is not the will of God, then why does God not stop us?" Even Cecilia doesn't have an answer for that.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Sister Gwen openly voices her suspicions of the convent. As a result, Cecilia witnesses her getting her tongue cut out, and she later finds her corpse in the catacombs.
- Dragon Their Feet: Father Tedeschi is not the main villain but ends up being a persistent threat to Cecilia in the climax, since he survives the lab explosion until Cecilia stabs him through the neck.
- Driven to Suicide: Sister Isabelle jumps to her death after she realizes she will not be chosen for the convent's purpose over Cecilia.
- Ethereal White Dress: Sister Celia spends a lot of the movie in a pristine white nightgown. By the end, it's not so pristine...
- Evil Old Folks: Two of the three heads of the convent are elderly people, who have been abducting and forcibly impregnating and murdering young nuns.
- Faux Affably Evil: Father Tedeschi is quite convincingly charming, but he's just as vile as his superiors. Cardinal Merola also makes an effort to be charming, but comes off as quite sleazy even before his true intentions are revealed.
- Genre Throwback: To nunsploitation films of the 1970s, and more broadly European horror films by directors like Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci.
- Good Shepherd: While most of the upper echelons of the convent are pretty off-putting, Father Tedeschi is quite kind and nurturing. It's subverted when it's revealed he's one of the architects behind their scheme, and simply views Cecilia as a glorified baby-making machine.
- Heroic Willpower: After being trapped in bed for weeks (if not months), Cecilia has enough strength to murder the Mother Superior by beating her to death. She is then able to walk on still-burnt feet, sneak up on and garrote the Cardinal, burn the genetics lab, and win two bloody fights with Tedeschi. All while in the early stages of labor. By the end, she even has enough strength left to execute the Antichrist seconds after giving birth to it.
- Homage:
- The scene of Cecilia arriving in Italy is filmed very similarly to Susie's arrival in West Germany in Suspiria (1977).
- Two pointed ones to Rosemary's Baby:
- Sister Isabelle's body after she jumps to her death is filmed exactly like the sight of Terry's body after she jumps to her death from the Bramford. Unlike Isabelle, it's heavily implied Terry was killed by the cult or possibly killed herself in order to escape impregnation, while Isabelle does so because she's not chosen.
- The less specific homage is the decision to never fully show Cecilia and Rosemary's babies respectively, just having them crying but not shown on camera and described by their horrified mothers.
- The shot of Isabelle glaring at Cecilia through the bedsheets is a reference to Halloween (1978).
- Knight Templar: The villains want to clone Jesus to bring about the second coming, and are willing to resort to extremely twisted means to make sure that happens.
- LEGO Genetics: A crossover between this, Artistic Licence – Biology, and Chemistry Can Do Anything. The convent apparently succeeded in getting Jesus Christ's genetic material off the cross and impregnating not just Cecilia but multiple different women with it.
- Medical Rape and Impregnate: The villains' mission. In order to create the Second Coming, they have taken DNA off the cross in order to impregnate a series of young women and create the Second Coming.
- Messianic Archetype: Cecilia is a variant. She is treated as a second coming of Mary, prayed to and worshipped, as a virgin mother who is believed to be pregnant with the Messiah. Despite the convent's attempts to create a Messiah in her baby, it's revealed that their efforts have in fact created The Antichrist.
- The Oner: The final scene is this, showing Cecilia giving an agonizing birth to the Antichrist, which can be heard offscreen making an inhuman breathing sound but is also briefly seen (though barely visible), up to her going to grab a large rock and beginning to squash the baby to death before the film cuts to black.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Implied. Father Tedeschi, Mother Superior, and Cardinal Merola never say anything explicitly misogynistic, but they all view women as little more than glorified baby machines and ignore Cecilia's autonomy and concerns, viewing themselves as the ones who know best what to do with her and their other victims' bodies.
- Pregnant Badass: Cecilia manages to take out three people (Mother Superior, Cardinal Franco Merola, and Father Sal Tedeschi) and escape the Convent all while injured and going through labor.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: Averted with Father Tedeschi, rather than the usual depiction in film, this one acknowledges that being in a room that ignites while not actually covered in flammable liquid himself is not going to be instantly fatal (although the burns he does receive will probably kill him from shock when his nerve endings start working again) and he's able to continue chasing Cecilia for quite sometime.
- The Reveal: The convent's goal is to try and recreate the Messiah through a chosen virgin mother, but their methods end up causing Cecilia to give birth to the Antichrist.
- Rule of Three: There are three heads to the convent.
- Smash to Black: In example played for extremely pitch-black laughs, the film cuts to black and the credits role at the same moment Cecilia smashes her newborn with a rock.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Cecilia already knows from seeing another with similar wounds that while disabling "now" her feet will heal enough to walk if given time. as such she is simply able to wait while pretending to co-operate and when a chance comes she immediately makes another escape attempt that actually succeeds this time.
- Villain Has a Point: Cardinal Merola may be an unrepentant murderer who is part of a cult trying to clone the messiah, but he does make a valid point when he asks Cecilia “If this is not the will of God, then why does God not stop us?”, a point that Cecilia does not have a response to. Later events somewhat imply Cecilia actually is an instrument of their will, saved in order to clean up this mess.
- Within Arm's Reach: Cecilia manages to dispatch Tedesci by stabbing him through the neck with a Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing, and kills Mother Superior by bashing her over the head with a heavy cross hanging on the wall.
- Workplace-Acquired Abilities: Father Tedeschi was a biologist before becoming a priest. Sure enough, he's the architect behind the villain's plot and the one who impregnated Cecilia.
