[Ad - Sponsored by Entertainment Earth] Sydney Sweeney is up the duff and it isn't so miraculous in this new horror film, which Film Brain finds efficiently nasty but not great.
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00:00 This video is sponsored by Entertainment Earth.
00:02 Hello and welcome to Projector and on this episode,
00:05 Sydney Sweeney's Nun might be giving birth to the second coming or something nightmarish in Immaculate.
00:12 [music]
00:28 Sister Cecilia, played by Sydney Sweeney, has moved to a remote convent in Italy
00:32 after an invite from Father Sal Tedeschi, played by Alvaro Morte.
00:37 Soon after arriving, Cecilia finds herself mysteriously pregnant and having not broken her vows,
00:42 the convent believes it to be an Immaculate conception.
00:45 But Cecilia begins to fear not just the convent,
00:48 but that whatever is inside of her may not be a blessing from God.
00:52 Immaculate is a reteening of Sydney Sweeney and director Michael Mohan,
00:56 who previously worked together on the Amazon film The Voyeurs a few years ago,
01:00 and Sweeney is definitely having her moment right now.
01:03 She's the bonafide It Girl.
01:05 Ever since she came to prominence on Euphoria a few years ago,
01:08 she's been tipped for stardom in the same way their co-star Zendaya has,
01:11 and that seems to be happening right now.
01:13 Launched by success of the rom-com Anyone But You,
01:16 which was a big sleeper hit over Christmas,
01:19 it reminded everyone just how fun that kind of movie can be with two very well-cast leads,
01:24 and Sweeney showed good comic chops in that.
01:28 Since then, we've had Madame Web, which we're largely going to sweep under the carpet,
01:32 although the best thing you can say about that is that she wasn't the worst thing in it,
01:36 although I think it does prove that she's past the point
01:39 where she can convincingly play high schoolers now.
01:41 I do think, though, that Immaculate is an attempt to cement her as a screen queen,
01:47 and Sweeney is no stranger to the horror genre.
01:50 In fact, you look at her CV before Euphoria,
01:52 she's appeared in plenty of independent horror movies,
01:55 think of things like Spiders 3D and the like,
01:59 so she's very much an old hand at this,
02:01 despite the fact this is her first star vehicle in the genre,
02:05 and I do think that it proves that Sweeney does have what it takes
02:09 to potentially become a new queen in the horror genre.
02:12 And Sweeney is undoubtedly centre stage in this movie.
02:15 She's in pretty much every single scene outside of the pre-title sequence.
02:19 As Cecilia comes to Italy, extremely wide-eyed and naive,
02:22 she doesn't speak a word of Italian,
02:24 so immediately that marks her as being an outsider.
02:27 People look at her strangely in the convent,
02:29 at first just simply because she's an American,
02:31 but she's very sincere about her faith.
02:34 The reason that she became a nun is because she had a near-death experience.
02:38 She fell through a frozen lake and became trapped under the ice,
02:42 and was technically dead for seven minutes before being revived,
02:46 and she believes this is part of God's purpose.
02:48 The reason that she was resurrected is because she needs to commit herself to his will.
02:54 This is despite the fact that she is rather sheepish in herself,
02:58 especially when dealing with the day-to-day tasks of the convent,
03:02 be it the elderly, who are often dealing with mental instability,
03:06 or the fact that she's also called upon to behead chickens,
03:09 and in one moment, she very sheepishly backs out of taking an axe to a chicken's head.
03:15 Early on, a character calls her nice, and she doesn't mean that as a compliment.
03:19 Cecilia is very quickly going to have to harden herself to the environment of the convent,
03:24 especially once she realises what she's actually let herself in for.
03:29 And Sweeney spends a lot of the movie channelling her inner Mia Farrow.
03:32 The movie is undoubtedly a riff on Rosemary's Baby, except this time set in a convent.
03:38 So Sweeney spends a lot of the movie called upon to be photogenically tortured,
03:43 if not literally, some of the time, at least emotionally, most of the time.
03:48 You can tell the anguish on her face,
03:50 and especially as she becomes increasingly uncertain about her beliefs,
03:56 as she comes to realise that she's not in a house of God, she's in a house of evil.
04:00 So there's actually quite a bit of subtle acting here from Sweeney,
04:04 but of course, the moments that most of the audience will take away
04:07 are the ones that Sweeney is very well known for at this point.
04:11 Sweeney was well known on Euphoria for her character's big emotional, dramatic outbursts.
04:16 She's an expert at screaming and crying,
04:19 and Immaculate often calls upon her to do that, often smothered in blood.
04:24 And Sweeney definitely has the credentials of being a scream queen,
04:28 because she's got the screaming part down, undoubtedly.
04:32 I do have to admit that I'm not usually a fan of the non-spoitation sub-genre,
04:36 as it's come to be known.
04:37 I mean, horses for courses and all that,
04:39 but my idea of a fun horror movie is not people being tortured for two straight hours.
04:45 And I'm looking at you, Saint Agatha.
04:47 I think what I don't usually like about these kind of movies
04:50 is they just feel so absolutely depressing to watch.
04:54 It's literally just torture, torture, torture,
04:57 with a side ordering of helplessness and despair.
05:00 And I think Immaculate elevates itself beyond that,
05:04 largely because of the way that Cecilia is both written and performed.
05:07 Sweeney elevates up this material,
05:10 largely because the character actually has some agency.
05:14 Once she realises that something is very, very wrong,
05:17 and this is most definitely not normal,
05:20 she's the first to try and bolt for the exit as quickly as possible.
05:24 Cecilia commits to multiple escape attempts,
05:27 and her character becomes more and more resilient over the course of the movie.
05:33 She actually becomes quite hardened by the end of it,
05:36 and doing things that at the start of it she was very reluctant to do,
05:40 and later on she will do anything to try and get herself out of this place.
05:45 That makes for a far more interesting character,
05:48 and makes for one that we can actively root for,
05:51 as opposed to one that simply passively suffers.
05:54 And there are scenes where Sweeney does have to do that,
05:57 but most of the time her character is actively fighting for her own survival.
06:02 If there is a faith in this movie, it's most definitely not in God,
06:07 but merely in her ability to try and fight for her own survival.
06:12 That belief is what powers her over the course of the movie increasingly,
06:17 not that of her own religion.
06:19 But aside from Sweeney, characterisation is very thin on the ground here.
06:23 There are two other nuns that Cecilia interacts with.
06:26 One of them, played by Beredetta Poccaroli,
06:28 sees her as being a rival.
06:30 She's immediately hostile towards her, and sees her as some kind of threat,
06:35 although it's not immediately obvious why that is at first.
06:40 And another one, played by Samar Tabasco, is one that she befriends.
06:44 She's extremely outspoken, surprisingly so, for being a nun.
06:49 You get the sense that this convent attracts kind of misfits and lost souls in its own way,
06:55 but both of these characters are initially introduced,
06:58 and as soon as they start getting interesting, they're shuttled off out of the narrative.
07:03 And I know that horror movies have to isolate the main character,
07:07 but honestly, it would have been better to flesh out some of these a little more,
07:11 and unfortunately, they come across as extremely underwritten,
07:15 a pattern which goes for all of the movie, in matter of fact.
07:20 However, what often elevates the movie is that it looks fantastic.
07:24 The cinematographer here is Alicia Christian,
07:26 who previously worked on the aforementioned Voyeurs, so that's yet another reteaming.
07:31 He also did the cinematography for The Night House, and he makes this movie look beautiful.
07:37 He makes fantastic use of the classic architecture of many of the locations,
07:43 and often, the cinematography is very strikingly evocative of religious paintings,
07:48 especially that moment that you've seen in the trailers,
07:50 where Cecilia looks like the Virgin Mary,
07:53 but deeply disturbed by it, and the weight of the responsibility on her.
07:59 Of course, it also helps that you have someone as photogenic as Sidney Sweeney in that moment,
08:03 who could easily be a muse in a painting.
08:07 But certainly, it's one moment in the movie that reminded me,
08:10 at several points, of something like Midsommar.
08:13 You definitely get that Ari Aster vibe.
08:16 You can clearly tell that they've taken influence from that movie.
08:19 That's a comparison that I'm going to swing back round to in a little bit,
08:23 but there are other moments where she's running around in the fields,
08:26 and she's covered in blood over her nightgown,
08:30 and again, that looks like a moment that could have easily escaped out of that movie.
08:35 Even so, there is a great gothic look to much of Immacula,
08:39 especially in one particular sequence, where Sweeney is in her nightgown,
08:43 holding a candle, wandering around in the middle of the night,
08:46 and she looks like a classic gothic horror heroine.
08:50 It's very striking visually, and I think that makes this movie so much better,
08:55 because it's clearly been done with a lot of craft.
08:58 The movie plays around with light, and especially dark,
09:01 especially late in the film, during a chase in the catacombs,
09:05 which in many other movies could have potentially been too dark to see,
09:09 but the movie plays around with the flickering of the torch in a very playful way.
09:14 I do have to admit that Immacula is a very efficient scare machine.
09:18 It knows exactly what it's doing, and keeps them coming at regular intervals,
09:22 often in the form of jump moments that are loud enough to rattle your feelings.
09:26 And yeah, some of these are actually quite cheap.
09:29 I'm talking about moments where birds suddenly slam themselves into windows at very high decibels,
09:34 and yeah, that is a very easy way of building tension, but it also works.
09:40 It definitely keeps the audience on the edge of their seat.
09:42 It builds a sense of uneasiness in the convent as we wander around it alongside Cecilia,
09:49 as we try to psych ourselves up and steal ourselves for the next jolt.
09:53 And of course, you've got the usual nightmarish dream sequences
09:57 that might not actually be dream sequences,
10:00 although one of those needs to be to the attention of epileptic viewers,
10:03 because there's lots of red flashes there that will definitely cause problems for them.
10:08 In addition to those, there is also bursts of sudden, shocking, gory violence.
10:13 Immacula has a real nasty streak to it at points.
10:17 For example, there's a moment where a woman falls from the top of a building,
10:21 and she lands square on her face, and you better believe that you're going to see the aftermath of that.
10:26 Another moment which very much reminded me of Midsommar,
10:30 there are moments where it gets very, very graphic.
10:32 I'm talking about bones breaking, faces being caved in, that sort of moment.
10:38 And that really gives Immacula a very, very bloody jolt above much of the horror competition.
10:46 It definitely knows how to just push the audience's boundaries and shock them.
10:51 I do think some of Sweeney's younger fans might be surprised
10:54 just how hard the horror in this movie goes and need to prepare themselves.
10:58 That being said, there is definitely an undercurrent of dark humour running throughout the movie,
11:03 which takes the edge off of some of it,
11:05 especially as the plot reveals itself as being more bizarre and absurd with each passing minute.
11:11 This is the kind of movie that literally has a nail from Jesus's crucifixion as a major plot point.
11:18 In fact, I think it's a Chekhov's gun, which is even more impressive.
11:23 Later on in the movie, Sweeney is doing her full horror-heroin thing,
11:27 and she's fighting against the bad guys whilst also being deep in the throes of labour,
11:33 which is absolutely ridiculous, and the movie knows it.
11:37 I'm pretty sure that's a physical impossibility,
11:40 because while I'm certain I'm never going to have to go through that,
11:42 I know plenty of people who have, and I can assure you
11:45 they're not going to be fighting anyone whilst they're in the midst of that.
11:49 But nevertheless, you have this absolutely bonkers finale,
11:54 and I wish that Immaculate was actually a bit more consistently like that.
11:58 It's fairly reserved for about two-thirds of it,
12:00 and then it reveals just how crazy and just how nutty it actually is,
12:05 and it really goes into full-on exploitation flick territory,
12:10 and that's probably when it's having the most fun with itself.
12:13 But there's one big thing that Immaculate is missing
12:15 that separates the good horror films from the great horror films,
12:19 and that's substance.
12:21 Horror is great as a vehicle for metaphor and themes.
12:25 It's a great way of exploring ideas,
12:27 and I think that's what's driven the genre's resurgence in the last decade or so.
12:32 But Immaculate isn't really interested in exploring ideas.
12:37 It's not interested in exploring faith,
12:40 nor is it particularly interested in seeing this near-death experience.
12:44 It just wants to provide shocks, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that,
12:48 but I did think it was interesting because on a visual level,
12:52 it definitely evokes a lot of those recent indie horrors.
12:55 You can call it the A24 effect if you want.
12:58 They don't own that, though, in all honesty.
13:01 But this is where I bring in the comparison to Midsommar
13:03 because there's definitely a lot taken from that movie,
13:07 but it feels like if you decide to watch Midsommar
13:10 and decide you were going to air it down
13:13 and remove out Florence Pugh's backstory to the absolute bare minimum,
13:17 just establishing it, and then just cut all the scares and all the plot, and that's it.
13:24 You took out all the other stuff.
13:25 You took out all the kind of artful stuff and all the other things
13:28 that might be a bit challenging for more conventional fare,
13:32 and just left what was mostly the more genre elements of it.
13:37 That's Immaculate in a nutshell.
13:40 And Immaculate is entertaining, but at the end of it,
13:43 after its very nastiest moment right before it goes into credits,
13:49 I felt very empty.
13:50 I felt largely like it just did its thing
13:54 and then didn't really leave all that much of a lasting impression
13:57 other than just, "Hmm, that was a little bit unpleasant."
14:00 It's hard to really knock Immaculate
14:01 because it clearly does all the things it intends to do,
14:04 namely scare the hell out of audiences
14:06 and provide a vehicle for Sidney Sweeney to become a screen queen,
14:09 and it does all that in just 80-odd minutes before the credits roll.
14:14 That's workmanlike, to say the least.
14:16 But what you won't find is anything beyond that.
14:20 I mean, visually, the movie looks fantastic,
14:23 but don't confuse that for death.
14:25 It may fool you into thinking that there's more to this movie,
14:28 but there really isn't.
14:30 But the visual look and Sweeney elevate Immaculate,
14:34 along with the fact that it commits to being the nastiest,
14:37 goriest version of itself, which is really striking,
14:40 especially in a marketplace filled with PG-13 blumhouse horror.
14:44 We definitely need more that have edge like this one.
14:48 Mostly, though, it's largely forgettable aside from that,
14:52 although I will be thankful for the fact that it's finally out
14:55 because I can stop confusing its trailer for the one for the first Omen.
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