Sydney Sweeney is Hollywood’s most interesting young movie star and Immaculate proves it
No one is doing it like Sydney Sweeney, our most idiosyncratic young movie star. Riding rising fame from The White Lotus and Euphoria, her true star turn technically started at the end of 2023 with the release of Anyone but You, a raunchy throwback rom-com that turned into a massive box-office hit. After that she starred in the awful and derided Madame Web, but managed to come out the other side not just unscathed but brushing it off with A-list energy, joking about the movie’s failure on Saturday Night Live mere weeks after it opened. Her next big win is Immaculate, a weird, fascinating, and extremely fun new horror movie that’s coming to theaters later in March.
Immaculate opens with an American nun, Cecilia (Sweeney), transferring to a strange little convent in Italy that specializes in end-of-life care for their fellow sisters in faith. But everything’s a little off; there are people wandering around in red masks, terse sisters questioning her actions, and priests who are a little too friendly. After a few short days doing difficult caretaking work, Cecilia mysteriously becomes pregnant. Everyone at the convent proclaims that she’s carrying the second coming of Jesus Christ. Cecilia’s life only gets weirder from there.
From the beginning, Immaculate director Michael Mohanis thoroughly committed to delivering a throwback exploitation movie of exorbitant sleaze. There may not be any outright sex in the movie, but there are long scenes of nuns taking baths in skimpy white dresses, and leering priests lurking around every corner that interrogate Cecilia over her virgin status — only to verify the purity and truth of their coming savior, of course. Immaculate also has more graphic blood, guts, and gore than most action movies these days. All of these little elements are hallmarks of prime 1970s nunsploitation, the horror offshoot specifically centered on the cloth.
The movie’s only real break from its genre roots comes in form: It’s simply a much better-made and
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