'Immaculate' movie review: Sydney Sweeney is an intense scream queen in new horror film

Welcome Sydney Sweeney to the catalogue of scream queens after her new horror film Immaculate (now in theatres), with director Michael Mohan, bringing back the terror of nunsploitation.

Immaculate release date: March 22
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli, Dora Romano
Director: Michael Mohan
Writer: Andrew Lobel
Runtime: 89 minutes

What is 'Immaculate' about?

Sweeney, who's also a producer on the film, plays Sister Cecilia, a nun who has left the U.S., ready for what God has planned for her at a convent in a remote area of Italy.

Set to take her vows, Cecilia doesn't realize how many secrets this convent has been hiding, which start to reveal themselves when she discovers she's pregnant. A mysterious immaculate conception.

Is 'Immaculate' worth watching?

It's been well established that spaces like convents and Catholic churches are prime settings for horror films. The darkness with light coming from candles, cloaked figures roaming ancient hallways, Immaculate very much taps into that inherent creepiness in its story.

The last 30 minutes of the film is incredibly engaging, filled with all the thrills and terror you want in a horror film, with a truly surprising ending. It has everything that makes many people want to close their eyes in a horror movie. Specifically, there's a big scream moment for Sweeney that is so impressive, it solidifies her place in scream queen history.

But for us, Immaculate took a bit too long to get to the really engaging point of the film. Like most horror movies, there needs to be time spent to build suspense, but Immaculate maybe took too much time to do that.

That being said, Sweeney is absolutely superb in this film, perfectly playing the innocence of the character at the beginning of the film, but still a woman who is well aware of and happy to call out society's misogyny.

When the movie picks up the pace with the scares in the later portion of the film, you feel that Sweeney is really committing to every fright and scream in a way that's incredibly alluring for the audience. It's something critically important for a horror film.

There's also an element of Immaculate that has Sweeney depicting the terrifying and enraging reality of women having to fight for autonomy of their bodies, pushing back against the patriarchy, which is welcome theme that's explored in the film.

While we adored Sweeney in Immaculate, we just wanted more for her, and the rest of the cast, in the first two-thirds of the film. If you can stay engaged, you'll get that payoff at the end, but we don't really want to wait that long to get to the point where we're really locked into the story.

If you're already a horror fan, it's worth adding Immaculate to your film lineup. If you're not a horror fan, Sweeney's performance won't disappoint, and is worth a trip to the movie theatre, if you can sit through the more sluggish beginning moments of the film.

Immaculate is in theatres March 22