Immaculate review by Bobby Blakey
The horror genre offers up a wide variety of sub-genre’s that feed all the various fans anything they could imagine. One of the most popular is the possession and hauntings with films like Exorcist, The Conjuring, The Omen, The Amityville Horror and so many more. The latest, Immaculate stars Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli, Giorgio Colangeli, and Dora Romano from The Voyeurs director Michael Mohan. Could this film have something new to conjure up or is it not worth sacrificing for?
Immaculate follows Cecilia, a woman of devout faith, who is warmly welcomed to the picture-perfect Italian countryside where she is offered a new role at an illustrious convent. But it becomes clear to Cecilia that her new home harbors dark and horrifying secrets.
I am always hit and miss with these kinds of movies but am a fan of Sweeney so was interested to see where they went with this one. To my surprise the film is almost identical in story to the recent release The First Omen, but sadly not as well handled. It isn’t a bad film by any means and has its own take on the story that works well enough, but it never fully distances itself enough to be original.
Already knowing the story takes the mystery out of it, but they do some different things here and the final reasoning of what they are actually doing is in fact a different approach to help it be its own thing. Sweeney is good in the role and goes all in. She had a lot of behind-the-scenes involvement to get this made so had passion for the project and it shows in her performance. She brings a tortured innocence to the role that is the perfect victim to the horrors that follow.
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The pacing is super slow for most of the run despite trying to build some tension. This is where it tends to lose steam as it is pushing towards the outcome, we are already aware of. Where it does fix itself is in its final act that is intense as times in a good way, but more importantly in the finite ending that is more along the lines of what the audience is likely rooting for.
It’s a well-crafted film, looks great and offers up some good performances, but the on the nose aspect of the story hurts it from being anything other than just another copycat film.
Maybe its my lack of really connecting with the genre or just liking the other films like this better, but it just didn’t work as well as I had hoped for me. I have no doubt it will find its audience with others though, so decide for yourself and check out Immaculate available now on digital, Blu-ray and DVD from NEON.
