Released in mid-March, the Michael Mohan-directed horror movie (or “nunsploitation” film, if you prefer), Immaculate, was well-timed to not only coincide with having some box office clout during Easter weekend, but also to make a social commentary on the state of women’s bodily rights at this moment in history. And perhaps that was part of “God’s plan” for making Andrew Lobel’s script languish in development hell since 2014, when Sydney Sweeney first auditioned for the role (later, she would buy the rights to the script and lie in wait until she got rich enough to help produce it herself). At that particular moment, women in the U.S. apparently didn’t know how good they had it…vis-à-vis bodily autonomy, that is.
In 2024, women have been made well-aware that their ostensibly “inalienable rights” are not promised to them. So what better time for Catholicism to reenter the mainstream consciousness through Immaculate? After all, this is the religion that has been, apart from Islam, the most adept at treating women as second-class citizens. Mere “vessels” for carrying children. This is precisely how Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) is seen by those sinister forces who have summoned her to a remote convent in Italy (the majority of the movie was filmed in and around Rome—Catholic mecca) after her own church in Detroit, Michigan closes down. Ultimately, there isn’t much faith in the United States anymore (how can there be when capitalism has long been the new god?). Something Sister Cecilia mentions to her new roommate, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli, of Baby fame). The latter is clearly less enchanted with the “majesty” of God than Cecilia is, even admitting to her that the main draw of joining the convent was that it meant no longer needing to rely on an abusive man for food and shelter—seeming to overlook the fact that the Catholic Church is the most abusive man of all. Regardless of the “divine feminine” energy of the nuns or not.
The nuns at this particular convent, however, aren’t exactly “full of life.” In fact, the convent is designed to accommodate “elder sisters” about to make their “transition” into the “next realm.” Ergo, there are only a handful of youth-oriented sisters in the mix, including Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi), the surly mentor who tells Cecilia from the get-go that she’s too “sweet” for her own good. As Madonna once wrote in a letter to director Stephen Jon Lewicki, “I knew I wanted to be a nun or a movie star. Nine months in a convent cured me of the first disease.” Cecilia is about to be cured big time of her own sweetness/religious zealotry as the plot unfolds from the Suspiria-esque first scene, during which Sister Mary (Simona Tabasco, best known to Americans as “the prostitute from The White Lotus, Sicily edition”) steals a ring of keys from Mother Superior’s (Dora Romano) drawer while she sleeps in order to escape the convent in the dead of night.
Sister Mary doesn’t make it very far before a cultish-looking gang of nuns pursue her, break her leg and bury her alive (in a scene very reminiscent of Beatrix Kiddo’s buried alive moment in Kill Bill: Vol. 2). Sister Mary, in this regard, seems to be a precursor to Sister Gwen, who turns out to be much too vocal/aware of a sinister plot afoot for the convent’s “needs.” Which are to keep a newly-pregnant (“immaculate conception,” of course—hence, the movie’s title) Sister Cecilia from being spooked. Mainly by the fact that she’s being styled as the twenty-first century answer to the Virgin Mary (when she’s not also being called Santa Benedetta…no one seeming to comment on how much of a [lesbianic] heretic that particular nun was viewed as—see Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta for further confirmation).
At the outset of her pregnancy, Sister Cecilia is willing to go along with this notion, taking it as a sign that she was right to assume God had a higher purpose for her when He “rescued” her from death when she was just twelve years old. At that time, she had seemingly drowned in a frozen lake, only to be revived after seven minutes. That’s when she turned to religion as a form of “repayment” to God for saving her. Surely, giving birth to the new Savior must have been what he had in mind all along, right? Only there is nothing divine at all about this conception, least of all how the baby ended up “incubating” inside of her. And that is all she is—an incubator—to the men pulling the strings of this nefarious operation, Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) and Cardinal Franco Merola (Giorgio Colangeli). It is Tedeschi who admits to Cecilia that he used to be a “man of science” before he “God showed him a path” to faith. Naturally (or unnaturally, in this case), he didn’t entirely let go of his scientific ambitions when he “made the switch,” instead funneling his talents into replicating Jesus’ genetic code from the Christ nail they happen to have on hand at the convent.
Sister Mary, in her state of terror, had likely unearthed this form of “experimentation” (was perhaps even one of the nuns tapped to attempt it), with Tedeschi trying numerous times to get one of his “embryonic implants” to “take” inside of a young nun’s belly. But silence and subjugation are the Catholic (and patriarchal) go-tos for getting rid of any unwanted “element” at the convent. First, Sister Mary is literally buried, then Sister Gwen gets her tongue cut out and, during the same scene, Sister Cecilia is creepily shushed (in that shudder-inducing way that only old ladies can achieve) and told she will never escape.
Throughout the narrative, this is a running theme: the silencing of women who are trying to speak out against the unfair use of their own bodies. Which they are repeatedly informed, through actions more than words, that they have no control over. Their bodies belong to “God,” de facto the conservatives running the Church. What’s more, they use that petrifying justification that all zealots are so fond of: “If it is not God’s will, then why doesn’t He stop it?” But Sister Cecilia is about to take so-called destiny into her own hands to prove to her oppressors that this Rosemary’s Baby life they’ve forced on her is not God’s will at all (leading her to a dark descent in the catacombs beneath the convent for scenes that, at times, remind one of Millie Bobby Brown pawing her way frantically through the dragon’s lair she’s been thrown into in Damsel).
In this messaging-related regard and many others, Immaculate is a notch above the average nunsploitation movie. Plus, it’s also a win because at no point does Sydney Sweeney try to speak Italian or use an Italian accent. That alone is commendable based on what audiences have suffered through with movies like House of Gucci and Ferrari. And so, if you’re looking for a new film to incorporate into your Easter-themed rotation each year, Immaculate is a solid, pro-abortion addition.
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