Edition #033: Immaculate
Suffering is love
I have to say, Immaculate (2024) is my favorite thing Sydney Sweeney’s done yet.
(Yes, more than Anyone But You (2023), which every person on every flight I’ve taken in the past year appears to be watching. Is it government-mandated??)
I’m not usually a fan of religious horror, but I love a redemptive fight for survival. And I’m always here for women behaving badly, especially if they’ve had to behave well for a very, very long time.
Sister Cecilia: Wait, so you don't even believe in God?
Sister Gwen: Of course I do. Life is so cruel. Only a man can be responsible.
What’s the deal?
Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) arrives at an Italian convent. Things get weird. She finds out she’s pregnant, even though she is a virgin. Immaculate conception? Maybe.
Cecilia’s health deteriorates. Another nun tries to kill her out of jealousy. She discovers that her close friend’s tongue was cut out. Convent chaos!
She fakes a miscarriage to escape, but her plan fails. She learns the truth: Father Tedeschi (main convent priest) used DNA from a holy relic — a nail from Jesus’ crucifixion — to impregnate her so she could birth the new messiah.
But Cecilia has other plans. She kills a nun with a crucifix and strangles a cardinal with rosary beads. She flees into the catacombs under the convent and gives birth to something... unholy.
I can’t stop thinking about...
Let’s talk nunsploitation.
This nuns-gone-wild horror subgenre centers around the tension between faith and feminism, chastity and corruption. With its roots in ‘70s European horror, nunsploitation films were full of sexual repression, corruption, manipulation, and the dichotomy between purity and depravity, madonna and whore.
The “exploitation” part refers to the genre’s use of taboo subjects like sexuality to draw in audiences. But while Immaculate bears many touchpoints to the classic nunsploitation genre, it plays its cards a bit differently, and is more interested in liberation than titillation.
Post-nunsploitation, perhaps.
In a world where Roe vs. Wade has been overturned and forced birth is a fear for many, this doesn’t feel like a provocative film about naughty nuns, but something closer to a call to arms.
Sister Cecilia starts off as an obedient, submissive novice and ends as a blood-slicked killer. The modern final girl doesn’t just survive — she destroys.
While a nunsploitation film might say: Look how sinful this convent is.
A post-nunsploitation film might say: Let’s burn it down.
I’ll get a match,
Horrorshow Jane