I hope you've been enjoying review week it's so rare that I post so many videos in one week but I hope you feel spoiled this week uh if you missed them Monday I had a review on Love Lies bleeding can't even remember what I reviewed and then on Wednesday I reviewed late night with the devil and today we're going to be talking about Immaculate which has been so requested for me to talk about which is funny I don't know I'll explain why later it's kind of funny I think it's because of the hype mostly but just given the movie content I was surprised that y'all wanted me to watch this so bad an American nun embarks on a New Journey when she joins a remote Convent in the Italian Countryside however her warm welcome quickly turns into a living nightmare when she discovers her new home Harbors a Sinister secret and unspeakable Horrors so this movie is distributed by Neon which is really having a moment right now I feel like this is the year of neon movies sometimes I feel like a24 really dominates and I don't normally pay too close attention to like distribution companies or production companies or anything like that unless it's like blumhouse a24 and now neon is definitely on my radar because they are actually Distributing my top two most anticipated movies of this year which is long legs and now cuckoo I saw the trailer for cuckoo when I went and saw Immaculate I wish I hadn't seen so much of it to be honest but from what I saw in the trailer it really looks scary like my kind of horror so those are my top two of the Year both going to be distributed by Neons so really keep it an eye on them now so immaculate is directed by Michael Mohan and this is not the first time that he's worked with Sydney Sweeney um obviously Sydney Sweeney is the lead in Immaculate but he also worked with her on I believe it's a movie called voyers which is an Amazon Prime original now with Sydney Sweeney being the lead in this I honestly I I hate to be this person but I had my doubts okay I know she's done a lot of things besides like Euphoria and Madam web okay but I still didn't believe her as a nun which is why my first expectation of this movie going in was that it was going to be very reminiscent of pray for the devil every year we get a bad exorcism movie every single time last year we got a couple of them actually they weren't terrible but you know what I'm talking about they're entertaining but they're not like really really good they're not The Exorcist you know what I mean so last year we got pray for the devil and it was kind of bad and that also had a leading lady as an unbelievable nun now upon watching the movie it works within the plot because she is kind of I don't want to say a runaway by any means but she is you know troubled looking for a new place and uh she has some trauma in her past and she's just looking for a new home so it works on that level because she is like a beginner nun okay not all nuns are like old ladies obviously and they even kind of address that in the movie with this being a Convent I really like the idea that the convent takes care of the elderly nuns and like this is where older nuns go to live out their last days and then they have these younger nuns that take their vows here and then help to take care of the older nuns so it's like a caregiving situation which I thought was a really believable setup also I want to point out this is like Sydney Sweeney's movie like she made this movie I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's like her movie she's responsible for this movie in 2014 Sydney Sweeney auditioned for this movie but it never went anywhere so she justed Ed to take on the role as a producer and adopt the script and rework it she hired a director and then sold the movie to Neon so it's because of her that this movie exists at all now it's funny to me because in general I thought this was a pretty standard kind of movie and I don't know why but it seems to be kind of polarizing cuz when I was like doing some research on it this is the Google review distribution of this movie and it's like either you love or hate this movie apparently cuz it has a lot of five stars and has a lot of one Stars so it's very interesting how polarizing this movie has become so I'm guessing it's safe to say most people will either love or hate this I don't love it necessarily but I did really like it and I'm actually shocked that so far this has been my favorite horror movie of the year which it does not have steep competition let me tell you cuz the other movies this year early year horror movies typically aren't fantastic but out of all the movies all the horror movies I've seen this year and especially in March this has been my favorite I did like it more than late night with the devil so this movie is really interesting to me because it doesn't have like a definitive time period so there's no like technology that really reveals as to what time or ERA this really takes place in and obviously it's meant to be probably more modern day I imagine but because of the setting set at this convent in the Italian Countryside there's really no super modern technology we don't see computers or phones or anything like that and I don't think they needed to date it with like periods sets or you know to really make it blatantly ' 80s 90s whatever maybe there's key um there's like hints to what era this actually is in throughout the movie but in general it has a very Timeless atmosphere and I think that is highly appropriate for this kind of religious horror I also appreciate the fact that I went in not knowing how disturbing this movie would actually get like this was so dark and I'm going to explain exactly why in spoilers this is the only video this week that I'm or the only review that I'm posting this week that will have spoilers because I have to talk about the ending and I'm going to be very vague about that until we get to spoilers so if you want to know like my true thoughts on this kind of movie then you'll have to wait till then but I'm keeping it very vague on purpose because I did not know a lot about this movie going in I had seen some of the trailer I don't even think I've I watched like the whole trailer so I didn't even know the general plot although given the title I kind of had an idea but I went in with pretty little information and I'm not going to lie I did look up some Parental Guidance on this just because I had been warned which thank you for anyone who ever warns me about things so up until the ending of this movie I really thought this was your run-of-the-mill religious horror movie it's not an exorcism horror it's very downto Earth it's very grounded in reality I feel rude saying that because some religions you know believe that that is reality and exorcisms are or possessions demonic possessions are real um but this felt very grounded and realistic and it wasn't demonic like I said so it was a nice change of pace for your traditional kind of religious horror that we get year after year but that does lead me to my criticisms of this movie first up the worst thing about this movie is the jump scares if this did not have those jump scares it would hands down be one probably one of the top horror movies of the year that I could anticipate like I could see it remaining one of my tops for the year if it toned down the jump scares and like refined the story a little bit more it would have been nearly perfect in my opinion and you know how I feel about jump scares I'm always against them but this one in particular had some really really bad ones okay we had birds hitting the window I thought we were past this but year after year we keep seeing movies do this jump scare um this is a movie that has a lot of jump scares that don't follow through with anything horrific it's just like like people popping into frame the birds all of that it's just a waste of time and I we don't need it the tension that we're building from this especially with the story that's happening we don't need to have our heart rate increase at certain points in time with birds hitting a window like we just don't need that generally this just kind of a cliche movie overall I really liked the story line um but of course a big picture we've seen this done before and there's also clich days along the way you know there's a dream sequence which I'm really getting kind of tired of as well and I understand why they do a dream sequence so they can like present a scene as if it's real to create this horrific scene and that's where they can like pump up the horror elements and then they just be like oh it was a dream so it's not actually that's not real but to me it erases all of that so it's like one thing about this is it is predictable all the way through like because it's so grounded in reality you know EX L what's happening most of the time pretty much up until the last 5 minutes I'm going to say cuz the last 5 minutes were so shocking to me up until that point you knew exactly what was going to happen and there wasn't that suspense in the sense of like I mean it's just kind of a generic story formula that they follow so you could like tell how it was going to pan out up until the last 5 minutes which I'll tell you exactly what those five minutes are in spoilers so given these criticisms why did I end up liking this so much I don't want to say it's completely because of the ending but that saved the movie for me hands down Sydney Sweeney's performance was totally fine throughout most of this movie she was good and then the last scene happens and I was blown away um but it definitely goes places uh I didn't anticipate and I will give a trigger warning as far as when I get into spoilers because I'll be kind of describing it a little bit and uh I don't know if I wish I knew going in to begin with I think going in without having all the information was actually beneficial for my viewing experience as difficult as it was for me I ended up crying at the end of this movie it was a lot it was really difficult for me to watch and I haven't had like that visceral of a like physical experience since watching hereditary in theaters that's one that really really got to me and this one felt more intense than that and I'm not saying as bad as hereditary in terms of like disturbing or shock factor or anything like that because most people will not agree with that I'm just saying that's like what I felt in my body and my reaction to it and like actually crying while watching the end of this movie to me it's kind of comparable in a similar way and I'll explain a little bit more in spoilers sorry I'm so vague about it but you just need to go see that ending let me and then you'll get it all you'll understand what I'm talking about I just want you to be able to decide for yourself if you want to also go in with minimal information um so that's pretty much all I'm going to say in the general review and I want to get into spoilers now and really talk about what happens in this movie and why it was so effective for me even though I can I rewatch this will I I don't know anyway let's get into spoilers let's just talk about it let's talk about it shall we obviously Immaculate the name of the movie uh points to Immaculate Conception right and she being a virgin who gets pregnant so she has a pregnancy throughout some of the movie um I'm going to say like through most of the movie and we get to see that go through it was very accurate depiction of pregnancy by the way with the tooth falling out um the nails you know it's just like those are gross things that can happen to some people when they're pregnant and um I thought it was cool that they added those little touches in um because your teeth do like get loose and stuff when you are pregnant and your teeth are heavily affected by it so I like those little touches and like her just having kind of a tough pregnancy and I thought it was very accurate to that but obviously given that that's why I was so Disturbed it wasn't even that she was pregnant and like going through pregnancy and things but obviously things are things happen towards the end okay so we had this man the priest who is the one who impregnated her now they keep that very minimal as far as like describing anything they don't explain how he impregnated her so there's no like SA it's maybe implied because there was a moment earlier on where she goes unconscious so we can assume during that scene is when that would have taken place cuz obviously it's she's not the Virgin Mary right she was impregnated and it's very disturbing I don't even think it was an saay situation it's very scientific what they're doing they basically have this stake that they believe uh was one of the stakes that was put through the hand of Jesus Christ when he was nailed to the cross so they found little bits of bone and blood on that and used that DNA to create it's like these um deformed babies they didn't really work out I don't really know the science behind that or what they were doing but the pregnancies prior that they you know they were obviously using the nuns in this building and like these older women who were living out their last days at the convent they were clearly past women who were utilized for this pregnancy and like giving birth to the next Jesus Christ and they were convinced that the one that Sydney Sweeney was carrying was the one and they got it right this time they do show the deceased embryos um that had failed prior to this pregnancy it's like really weird to talk about I don't know makes me really uncomfortable as a mother you know so it's just like that's why this was so difficult if I wasn't a mom this probably would not have affected me as much I would not have cried let me tell you so anyway this man is now she's trying to leave because one of the men was like well God hasn't stopped us yet so if it's so wrong you know why he would have stopped Us by now and so she's like ah I'll stop you so she like lights the building on fire and like tries to escape and she ends up in these catacombs cuz there's catacombs under the building right and so the priest is coming after her and decides he's going to take the baby from her belly so I knew that there was a pregnant belly cut in this movie because I looked up a little bit of what happens um and I'm surprised that's where that ended where that warning kind of ended because it gets worse than that that wasn't even that bad to be honest anyway I'm like overe explaining how this is happening but he tries to take the baby from her she gets away she stabs him with the spike from the you know crucification of Jesus Christ and then she gets away she uh she's in labor by the way I forgot to say that she's been in labor um her water broke when she starts trying to like light the building on fire and get away and things so every once in a while she has a contraction and she finally like breaks free from the catacombs and she's on this little mountain side and uh it just cuts to her giving birth and it's not graphic or anything they keep it very tasteful and I am so grateful for that and it's such an emotional scene for me just I don't know as someone who like went through Labor and birth and you know did all that I don't know I'm not saying it's not emotional for other people but I that's why it affected me so much and made me cry she pushes the baby out she's screaming right this very Primal scream and it gives you chills and that's one of the reasons why it felt like hereditary because when Tony Colette makes that scream when she finds her daughter it's like that moment is so traumatizing and that's what this scene reminded me of was just the trauma and like her pushing this baby out so then you know it comes out you do see a little graphic moment where she bites the umbilical cord and then you hear the baby um making sounds and you know that it's not a healthy baby and that it is in fact a another deformed child and so she decides to be merciful and grabs a rock and takes care of that and um that was so difficult to watch like it was probably one of the hardest viewing experiences I've had in the theater maybe ever um but just the fact of going through all that pain and suffering and Trauma and then to end the baby's life like that is so horrific but like I said they were tasteful about it they never showed the baby they don't they show her like lifting The Rock and throwing it down um but they don't actually show anything brutal and I think that would have definitely gotten into an extreme horror territory if they had so I'm really glad they were reserved with that scene and just kept it on her and her face and everything like that that is not where I thought this movie was going to go I thought she was going to escape when she bust out of the Catacombs and she's like on the cliff side she's in labor I don't know what I thought was going to happen there she'd give birth and then like walk around with her baby and then get help and then she just have her baby so I was really shocked that they actually went there with that scene and um really pushed it and made it really disturbing and it was so shocking in comparison to the rest of the movie because the rest of the movie did not have that vibe that it was that dark I mean I can't really say that cuz there was like some torture going on the gore was really good in this we have head trauma specifically face trauma in this which was an unexpected scene as well and I feel like that was the Turning Point as soon as her friend got her tongue cut out I was like oh this is something completely more messed up than I really thought was happening it's obviously very cult like so if you're into cult religious cults this definitely fits that bill one thing that I absolutely love about that final scene is it was actually a single take that was the first take that they filmed of her doing that scene she had only filmed it twice period but they used the first take of that which is absolutely wild to me that she pulled that off the first time that they shot that and that just proves to me like how amazing Sydney Sweeney actually is at acting and I'm not doubting her in any of the roles that she's been in but I don't think any other role has really pushed her to this level like that and I really hope we get to see her in more like disturbing or like more horror horror movies like this because I think she really shines and could definitely be a new like final girl scream Queen so that's all I'm going to say about that um hardest movie to watch but definitely the I'm glad I didn't know every thing going in because the shock factor is sometimes what I'm looking for in a movie experience and watching this in a theater where there's no Escape it was just it was hard to watch for sure obviously I had a very emotional reaction to it um but it's so rare that I have that and like movies like that actually get to me that's typically not what I look for in a horror movie is that kind of horror and the extreme side to me that's extreme I know it's not going to be for everyone but to me that's one of my like triggers is like pregnancy horror and labor and traumatic birthing and things like that so to me it's on the extreme side and I actually enjoyed the experience as a whole which is really bizarre to say um but I've been pushing my boundaries a little bit more this year and this one I didn't intentionally push my boundaries on but I'm glad I did I guess I'm glad I saw it and didn't know anything about it there's of course a bunch of movies coming out in April some that I'm excited for are Humane um the last Omen looks okay again it's another the religious horror and I just feel like I'm doing a lot of those lately with the Late Night with the devil Immaculate now the first Omen I feel like we're getting a lot of like religious stuff going on but let me know which ones you want me to watch I don't really want to go see sting to be honest it doesn't look like a movie I would like and I've already pushed myself to see movies I don't like in theaters so I think I might take a break with that one just a for warning I might not review that one um maybe at the end of the year after it's on streaming anyway let me know which movies you want me to cover in the month of April I hope you enjoyed this video and I will talk to you soon [Music] [Music] bye