Sydney Sweeney has become a recognizable presence on television, garnering acclaim for her outstanding portrayal of Cassie Howard in the popular HBO series Euphoria. Her remarkable performance in the show even earned her an Emmy nomination.
With that said, Sydney Sweeney has clearly branched out and become a huge star in the world of Hollywood, as she has acted in films such as Anyone But You, which turned out to be a Box Office Hit. However, her latest film Immaculate doesn’t live up to its name as it has far too many plot holes.
Sydney Sweeney’s Immaculate Is Full of Plotholes
According to Screen Daily, Michael Mohan’s latest feature, Immaculate, premiered at SXSW. Despite hopes of captivating genre fans, it faces tough competition from more accomplished religious horror films like The Nun series or The Devils. Its potential success lies partly with Sydney Sweeney’s emerging starpower, with Neon distributing it in the US starting March 22.
Sweeney portrays Sister Cecilia, a devout young woman from Detroit who arrives at an Italian convent for infirm and dying nuns, unable to speak the language. Believing herself destined for a divine purpose due to a childhood accident, she finds support from the charismatic Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte).
However, the narrative quickly takes a dark turn when Sister Cecilia, a virgin, discovers she is pregnant through immaculate conception. What starts as a miracle soon descends into a nightmare, with sinister secrets lurking in the convent’s halls and among its inhabitants, including mysterious nuns wearing red masks.
The exposition is minimal, leaving important questions unanswered, like whether Sister Cecilia has any contact with her family or the identity of the mysterious nuns in red masks. Additionally, the film’s time period remains ambiguous. Immaculate seems more interested in mimicking 1970s horror tropes and delivering shallow scares rather than developing memorable characters or focussing on engaging storytelling.
Anyone But You Director Discusses The Film’s Musical Number
Anyone But You featuring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, is loosely based on William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The film makes it evident that a story doesn’t have to be complex or overloaded with special effects to be financially successful.
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, filmmaker Will Gluck talked about his directorial approach to Sydney Sweeney’s Anyone But You. Returning to the genre that boosted his career in the mid-2010s, he aimed for his latest project to leave a lasting impression.
“I really did feel a huge obligation to maybe make the last rom-com in the history of cinema and theatricality. I really wanted this to feel big and epic and musical and funny and sexy and edgy and adult in order to get people to experience it in the theater with their friends and their dates.”
In recent years, romantic comedy films have taken a backseat as superhero and science fiction movies dominate the entertainment scene. With an overwhelming abundance of content in these genres, fans appear to have grown weary and are now craving something light and easy. Gluck has pledged to deliver precisely that.
“I sound like a pitchman, but I guarantee that when you walk out of this movie, you will have had a good, fun experience, which rom-coms always deliver.”
One of the most intriguing features of the movie was the end-credits scene, where the cast of Anyone But You sings to Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten. The director revealed he chose this song because everyone knows the lyrics.
“When I started playing [“Unwritten”] and the other [potential] song for people, I very quickly realized that everyone knows [“Unwritten”]. No matter how snarky or how much of a curmudgeon someone might be, you can’t not love that song. And we knew we were right when we started playing it out loud in the bar scene with 300 extras. They all knew the song, and I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, everyone knows this song.’ ”
Hence, he integrated the song as the musical number at the end of the movie. Undoubtedly, it left an impact on the audience, with Unwritten lingering in their minds as they exited the theater.
