To paraphrase… somebody I think, a great film need only have a great opening, a great ending and two or three great scenes in-between. In that sense Immaculate is indeed a great movie, it is certainly elevated by the true utter balsiness and unrelenting quality of its ending. As a matter of fact if it were not for the absolute audaciousness of its final five minute one take then I very much doubt there would be too much major favour in the conversation of Michael Mohan’s latest collaboration with Sydney Sweeney, who is swiftly growing into a very strong producorial figure in the industry, managing in this case to find projects that suit her star qualities. Immaculate is a strong film that has been so very bizarrely pitted almost immediately against The First Omen as two films with bizarrely similar plots and a series of almost identical moments, for my money I did indeed far prefer one over the other, however there is still a lot of good to be said for the sake of Immaculate.
There is a
winking fun that enters into Immaculate by the end of its 90 minute run
time that leads to a very propulsive and enjoyable final act, the regret
overall is that the first hour of the film is traditional and unoriginal dull
atmosphere work that is punctuated by a few fine practical gore effects, but
overall is far too reliant on simply an uneven handle on tone. Is Mohan going
for Nunsploitation? By the end that seems apparent, however up until that point
the film is far too reliant on a series of trudging and lengthy sequences that
build to nothing more than a cheap jump scare, there is very little craft
unfortunately when it comes to the horror implemented by Mohan – it is
unsuccessful cheap jump scare or by the end successful schlock. Sweeney as a
scream queen, here as Sister Cecelia, manages for me to pull off a sincere
quality of believability that naturally grows more and more strained as she
attempts with futility to escape her surroundings. As Cecelia grows more and
more pro-active the film naturally grows more and more interesting and
exciting, however bar a fun and spooky opening scene starring the always
wonderful Simona Tabasco, the film is far too drawn out to say that it is in
fact only 90 minutes. Alvaro Morte does a wonderful job too as a charming, if
unsettling and eventually unsurprisingly duplicitous though initially caring
figure for Sweeney. Overall Immaculate is simply a film that gets to the
good stuff far too late and even then although the good stuff is very enjoyable
in its own right, it does as a film overall work entirely in direct conflict
with the tone and timbre of the film running up to it. Sweeney is completely
game and gives her absolute all to a film that is nowhere near as unrelenting
or powerful as her performance at the core of it is.
A 5/10 solid horror that does have by the final twenty minutes both a humorously outrageous reveal and as aforementioned an outstanding finale, however for the most part Immaculate was a film for me that simply plodded along with cheap scares and a solid atmosphere, but nothing too great. Sweeney as an actress has all the qualities of a scream queen and manages to pull this entire film off very well, and as a producer I too hope this sparks a continued focus on getting other projects that suit her strengths. Mohan has a hand on atmosphere but in regards to horror and scares relies far too heavily on the cheap stuff and for the most part although it does eventually segue into some fun and schlocky stuff, it is for the most part a rather solid gothic piece.
P.S. Would my rating of Immaculate be higher if it was not so immediately released in the window of The First Omen, which is by no means a perfect film, but just for my money was superior to Immaculate in a variety of different ways. I am afterall writing this review after seeing both films and in this case I actually went into First Omen with far lower expectations and even was turned off watching it by the fact I had so recently viewed a film so very much its sister. Either way dust has settled now and although First Omen is no masterpiece, it is a film I will return to, I don’t think that is the case with Immaculate however I must admit.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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