'Immaculate' review: Ideas deep, scares cheap in Sydney Sweeney movie

With Christians observing Lent, and with Easter Sunday a little more than a week away, some might take umbrage at the release date for the psychological horror film “Immaculate,” which is set in a mysterious and forbidding convent in Rome, is abundant with horrific religious imagery and features a myriad of priests and nuns of dubious character, and that’s putting it mildly.

As a Catholic, I wasn’t offended. If your faith can be shaken by a movie, work on your faith. As a critic, I was underwhelmed and unimpressed.

Credit to star Sydney Sweeney, director Michael Mohan and screenwriter Andrew Lobel for taking such a big swing and making bold (albeit often heavy-handed) statements about male-dominated institutions exerting control over a woman’s body, and how blind faith can often lead to horrific and tragic consequences. But despite a promising beginning, “Immaculate” relies too much on jump-scares and disturbing imagery for the sake of shock, and flies off the rails with an absolutely bonkers climactic sequence that plays like something out of a cheap horror film.

With clear influences such as “Rosemary’s Baby” and the original “Suspiria,” this is a movie that aspires for high-level shock value and occasionally succeeds, but too much is left unexplained or only half-explored over the 89-minute running time. We often talk about how multi-episode limited series might have worked better as a feature film; here is an example of a film with some intriguing elements that might have been more effective over the course of a half-dozen streaming episodes.

In the the third collaboration between director Mohan and Sweeney (who also served as a producer here), after the 2017 Netflix series “Everything Sucks!” and the 2021 erotic thriller “The Voyeurs,” Sweeney plays Sister Cecelia, a novitiate from just outside Detroit who has journeyed to the Italian countryside to join My Lady of Sorrows, which serves as a convent and a hospice for older and ailing nuns to spend their final days. Sister Cecelia is here at the request of the dashing, movie-star handsome Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), who once studied biology before turning to God, and that seems like the kind of anecdotal back story info that might come into play later on.

From the moment Cecelia arrives in Italy, things seem … off. The customs officers at the airport make remarks (in Italian, which Cecelia has yet to learn) about what a “waste” it is for such a beautiful young woman to take a vow of chastity.

Once she arrives at the convent, she finds herself in a kind of “Mean Girls” environment. Cecelia befriends Sister Gwen (Bernadetta Porcaroli), who fled to the convent to escape an abusive relationship, but Cecelia also is targeted as a rival by the jealous and spiteful Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi). There’s also a backstory involving Sister Mary (Simona Tabasco), who for some reason tried to flee the convent in the dead of night, and let’s just say that resulted in some brutal consequences.

My Lady of Sorrows is ostensibly a holy place, but it appears to be more ominous than the Overlook Hotel from “The Shining.” (Production design and cinematography on this film is impressive.)

Cecelia has barely settled in at the convent when she discovers she’s pregnant, which comes as a shock given Cecelia has never “had congress” with a man. The Cardinal (Giorgio Colangeli) and the Mother Superior (Dora Romano) decree this to be an Immaculate Conception and that Cecelia’s child must be the second coming of Christ. (Imagine being a nice girl from Michigan who just wanted to answer a higher calling and do some good in the world and then getting THAT news.

Cecelia’s reaction is one of shock and bewilderment and a feeling of being lost; it doesn’t help that not everyone in the convent is pleased about this development, and some find it to be utterly wrong and even obscene.

The imagery and religious symbolism in “Immaculate” kick into another gear as we go along, with everything from crucifixes to rosary beads to a nail reportedly from Jesus Christ’s cross coming into play.

The hierarchy won’t let Cecelia visit a hospital. That seems suspicious, yes? We catch glimpses of nuns wearing red, face-covering masks that make it look like they’re about to rob a bank. Rituals of punishment and sacrifice are enacted. Father Sal delivers a piece of exposition to Cecelia (and to us) that is a real howler, and that for this viewer, effectively ended any chance of buying into this blood-soaked hysteria.

Sydney Sweeney once again demonstrates her willingness to take on challenging and edgy material — she’s in Florence Pugh territory here — and she delivers solid work, but “Immaculate” is so preoccupied with trying to jolt us with quick scares that it neglects to provide lasting and substantial terror.