Putting the evil into the veil.

The best that can be said of the Sydney Sweeney schlock horror starrer, IMMACULATE, is that it illustrates the misogynist patriarchy of the Catholic Church.

Priest and prelate act abominably towards a postulant, impregnating her with DNA scraped from a nail presumed to have pierced the flesh of Christ on Calvary. Rape by relic will bring forth the Second Coming is the delusional hope of former biologist turned bible basher and defiler of females, Father Tedeschi, played with extreme unctuousness by Alvaro Morte.

He is supported and abetted by his Cardinal and the cohort of nuns that run a convent that acts as a hospice for old habits, which here, decidedly bad, and die hard. The similarity between the words convent and coven unequivocally come to mind.

Critic and academic, R H W Dillard suggests the words human and poetic in conjunction with horror and danger is the key to the nature and function of the horror film as an art form. In IMMACULATE, the horror and danger has jettisoned the human and poetic, producing a paltry parable of gross jejuneossity.

Sydney Sweeney is miserably miscast as Sister Cecilia, an American novitiate plucked from an ailing parish in her native land and implanted in a clandestine convent in rural Italy.

The naive novitiate is unveiled as a clueless character, ignorant to the point of imbecilic, proving herself to be a wimp in a wimple. Perfect fodder for male manipulation of the most monstrous.

Mining low carat gold in Frankenstein and her, IMMACULATE screams classical cult status but substitutes a whimper for a bang in the holiest of horrors hall of fame. Suspense is suspended at the film expense when the narrative devolves into gratuitous slasher mode, one act bestowing a physical vow of silence.

Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi as Sister Isabelle impresses as a nasty nun who takes an instant set against Sister Cecilia. Now there’s a back story that seems more interesting.