The Sinister Secrets of Our Lady of Sorrows: Immaculate (2024)

Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) felt lost after her church closed outside of Detroit. She’d survived terrible events in the past and felt God was protecting her for some kind of reason, but it was not clear what that might be. However, when contact came from Italy in the form of Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), offering her a place at an Italian convent, she leapt at the chance, seeing this as the next step in her journey. It is a big step, all right. How big she will learn in time.

A one way ticket raised red flags aplenty at the Italian airport, where customs officials (Niccolò Senni, Tiziano Ferracci) find serious doubt that such a young woman would commit to becoming a nun. She convinces them with her devotion, however. Then, Deacon Enzo (Giuseppe Lo Piccolo) delivers her across the lovely countryside to Our Lady of Sorrows, a gorgeous building that seethes with history. Mother Superior (Dora Romano) seems nice enough, though her English is lacking. Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) radiates judgment and pettiness. Sister Mary (Simona Tabasco) is kind but also somewhat more rebellious. After being given plenty of opportunities and invitations to leave the place and return to the world she knows, Cecilia takes her vows and becomes one of the order.

It’s soon after that she starts to learn some stranger details. Many of the oldest nuns are suffering delusions, while the younger set seem to have come there because they were running from something. The convent is home to a surprising relic, recovered from the holy land. A battered, nine inch nail that the order believes to have been one of the very nails used to crucify Jesus. Batty Sister Francesca (Betty Pedrazzi) is fascinated with collecting hair samples and calling Cecilia a saint. A strange message scrawled on her bedroom wall by a former occupant and then hidden behind a picture of Mary suggests that there are secrets at play.

Soon enough, strange nightmares about red veiled nuns begin to plague her. And a short time after her arrival, Cecilia learns that, despite being a virgin, she is pregnant. Cardinal Franco Merola (Giorgio Colangeli) and Father Tedeschi conclude that it may be an immaculate conception. She might be the vessel for delivering their lord and savior. But if this is a blessed event, why is she barfing up occasional teeth or losing her fingernails as the pregnancy progresses? And why does Sister Gwen seem to be taking her pregnancy as a personal affront, a betrayal?

Not all is as it seems in Our Lady of Sorrows. How much can Sister Cecilia take on faith and how much is manipulation by forces that may not be as divine as they seem? She soon finds herself a prisoner of in these old walls as well as her body. But she still wants answers, and when she gets them, they will shake her beliefs to the core. Michael Mohan helms a sly blend of giallo mystery and religious horror yarn with Immaculate (2024).

Micheal Mohan’s picture is a sly one, offering a dark view of the negative sides of religion. The film never questions that concept of faith. Instead, it offers critiques of the sorts of empowerment that some folks (typically but not always men) take for themselves by subjugating their fellows and loyal flock (overwhelmingly women) through dogma, teaching, and a steady wearing down of personal will via a manmade and therefore flawed institution. It draws influence from a variety of sources and films that also bring up questions and provocations about the evils to be found in such institutions. For example, there is a tongue slicing sequence that draws to mind an infamous similar sequence in The Mark of the Devil (1970).

However, such questions and provocations are not central to the piece. They take the fore on occasion, such as two different scenes involving women trying to flee the convent only to find themselves pursued by figured draped in the uniforms of authority—nun habits in a prologue and priestly wardrobe later on. Mostly, the film is concerned with the mystery of what is happening here.

Andrew Lobel’s screenplay offers plenty of opportunities for the protagonist to observe, the inquire, the sneak around dark hallways and chambers armed with only a single candle, seeking out clues about the real happenings behind the façade. This is where the script works delightfully well, melding gothic elements alongside mysteries that wear an innocent veneer while working perverse angles under the surface. Therein we get a sense of some additional influence here, prompted in some part via the Italian setting.

I’ve long been a sucker for the Italian horror films, gialli, and exploitation flicks. There’s a coolness to them that sometimes manifests as going for the gusto in terms of mayhem or steadier, less aggressive approaches to ultimately perverse topics. This film draws no small inspiration from the width and breadth of Italian genre fare from the 1960s and 1970s. It’s not as splashy or passionate as an Argento or Fulci flick though when gory effects do materialize, they are certainly bright and wet practical effects. Instead, it shares some of the creepiness and odd moodiness found in flicks like Damiano Damiani’s The Witch (1964), Mino Guerrini’s The Third Eye (1966), or Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962).

In fact, star Sydney Sweeney reveals the same mix of beauty, intensity, vulnerability, and resolve as Barbara Steele in her horror film heydays. She certainly picks some intriguing projects to be in. It turns out Immaculate was something of a passion project for her, since she was responsible for getting the script bought, a director selected, and the film made. This film is a lovely counterpoint to her performance in the dread-filled, cosmic horror flick, Nocturne (2020), another feature length fright flick about a woman driven by a higher calling who finds herself in an unwelcoming locale who soon learns that a strange, occult mystery lurks underneath the cool façade. The two films might not seem to share much overlap, but they do. Enough to make me consider watching the films as a double feature at some point.

Immaculate has quite a bit in common with Argento’s era of Italian exploitation fare. The structure of the film plays along very well with the beats of many of Argento’s best offerings from his early period. We have an English-speaking (typically American) character arriving at an institution of learning, instruction, and obsession in Italy. She doesn’t speak the language, but she does try (haltingly) to communicate. There, she encounters likeminded associates (some who share her yearning, many who do not) as well as unsettling authorities. Along the way, she gets pulled into a mystery that may be wholly of this world but has inexplicable, possibly supernatural elements, which builds through both investigatory and bloody murders toward a revelation about the institution’s real origins/purpose. The finale involves the protagonist dragging the villainy out into the light as well as a rather gruesome (and cathartic) resolution to many of the instigators of those gory crimes. This is the spine of both Argento’s giallo films as well as his horror flicks, including Suspiria (1977), Phenomena (1985), and Opera (1987). And many of these elements can be found in works such as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970), Four Flies on Gray Velvet (1971), and Deep Red (1975).

However, Immaculate never feels like a direct lift of such material. It’s the latest contribution to the artistic conversation Argento weighed so heavily in during that phase of his career. This picture is its own beast, nodding to what came before while still showing the grit of using this material for its own purposes and taking matters in its own direction.

The score from Will Bates is a lovely sounding creation, blending choirs with instrumentation, classic church themes with some sinister undercurrents that play against what those choirs are singing about. The album is available for purchase and download, of course. I recommend the song “The Te Deum” as a near perfect realization of what the film is doing—we have a women’s choir singing praises to the saints and divinity (in Latin, natch) while the topmost layer of music follows their progress. However, there is something just a tad off with the next layer down, a strange blend of anharmonic and slower pieces that lend the piece a subtle off quality, and add to the listener’s unease. Taken at face value, it’s an expression of personal faith, but something is wrong under the surface. The music is a mystery that balances the beautiful and the ominous.

The cinematography from Elisha Christian employs limited light sources quite effectively. The nighttime scenes roaming around the building revel in pockets of shadow that are nightmarishly deep. The daytimes balance gray scales, both from pale skies and stone facades, with a lush and colorful wilderness that really plays up the difference between man’s domain and the wilder stretches.

There is something about the way the camera moves and interacts with both the wonderfully textured locations and the characters who occupy them, which is surprisingly distancing. The images have a coldness built into them, as though the camera is a removed witness to events instead of an invisible part of them. I was put in mind of similar feels in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011).

Immaculate is not without its flaws. There are story elements that feel unresolved. There are thematic materials that get raised but only in a cursory fashion. There are plot holes fostered by the film’s fascination with nightmarish logic.

And yet, Immaculate is a film I could not take my eyes off of. It has a strangeness and enigmatic qualities that are intriguing. It’s a piece about the vulnerability personal faith can engender in a woman when she mistakenly trusts an institution peopled by those who want to use and/or destroy her. It’s a piece about the possible hope of mankind or its destruction. It’s a religious horror film that doesn’t trot out the devil on stage in order to smash him in the face and reaffirm the audiences convictions about good and evil. It’s a film that asks questions it cannot always answer, but still longs for some kind of affirmation. It’s a clever, sometimes messy, but never less than beautiful and beautifully acted gem of darkness.

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Immaculate is currently playing in theaters. It is not yet available for order or pre-order in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions. However, the film’s score is available via streaming and mp3 album.

Writing for “The Sinister Secrets of Our Lady of Sorrows: Immaculate (2024)” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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