Immaculate had the bones to be a great freak-out / campy horror film but it turned out full of generic scares to pad the already short 90 minute runtime.

The film stars Sydney Sweeny as a young American sister who joins a convent in Italy that takes care of aging nuns. Before you can say Annakin Who? she gets a bad case of immaculate conception. But this being a horror movie with nuns in it, things take a jump-scare turn for the worse.

This is probably the most convention Neon horror movie out there. it’s SO typical of other convent/monastery-based horror, you’ll think you’ve seen it all before (probably because you have). It’s full of the usual jump scares and pointless creepy moments you’ll wonder why the ninety minute runtime.

There are hints of something to hang onto. The other nuns are a bunch of mean girls and that’s kind of funny. Late in the film, Sweeny gets some sweet revenge that made me think “Rosemary would never”. And, after a dreadfully slow third act that doesn’t live up to the potential, we get an eye-opening scene designed to piss off a lot of Christians in general and the religious right in particular (I endorse this message… hopefully they’ll just look the other way and avoid the Streisand Effect).

I wanted this film to cut the generic spook show crap and really lean into the sweet revenge business. But it keeps going back to the typical stuff, only playing around with either high camp or full-tilt boogie insanity. It keeps pulling back and not quite delivering. Even its Big Secret reveal was done more recently in another much campier and over-the-top religious-based horror film.

The movie isn’t worthless. The acting is solid, the mean girls kind of fun, and the ending is a bit of a sacrilegious trip (in a good way <nods>). But too much is generic spook show jump scare / it-was-just-a-dream hokum. I enjoyed about half the film, tapped my arm wrest for the other half.

Score: 74