Parents' Guide to Immaculate

While it has plenty of cliches and logic holes, this horror movie is also filled with eerily effective filmmaking, thought-provoking themes, and a senses-shattering performance by Sweeney. It might have been little more than a guilty pleasure, but Immaculate takes things up a notch with its gobsmack of an ending, a (potential spoiler alert) shockingly long take with Sweeney doing some heavy physical and emotional lifting and fully earning her paycheck.

Before that, however, there are questions. If this type of thing has happened before (as is said at one crucial juncture), why doesn't anyone seem to remember it, and why are they acting as if it was the first time? And why does Sister Cecilia wait until she's in labor to try her violent escape? Sure, it's more dramatic this way, but it would have been more practical to try it at any point during the previous nine months. Yet it's almost as if writer Andrew Lobel and Sweeney's The Voyeurs director Michael Mohan are aware of the silliness and choose to pile it on. The scares are all pretty familiar, but the filmmakers seem to be having fun with them. The convent is full of the squeakiest floors and the creakiest doors, and it's just gloomy enough that there seem to be figures creeping in the corners. And, of course, spiritual hymns take on a new, sinister factor. When a character mentions during Sister Cecilia's initial tour that the convent was built on top of old catacombs ("it's off limits!"), we know that said catacombs will play a role in the climax, and we're not disappointed. Immaculate has some of the same qualities that made Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta work in its over-the-top way. It's "nunsploitation" at its most haywire.