Hollywood’s It girl, Sydney Sweeney, went all out for one of her most ambitious projects, alongside director Michael Mohan with Immaculate, a direct leap into the horror-thriller genre. Portraying Sister Cecelia, the movie had the actress take on a dark and eerie storyline with scenes involving her drenched in blood, against the backdrop of a picturesque Italian countryside. Soon after its release in theaters worldwide, the film quickly garnered views and praise, climbing up in box office revenue and acclaim.
In sharp contrast, its digital release brought about a stringent wave of criticisms aimed not at Sweeney but at the artistic choices made by Mohan. It turns out that those complaints only highlighted a plaguing issue associated with streaming services and had shockingly nothing to do with any of the creative executives involved in the film-making process. The issue has now reached such severity that the director chose to address it.
Immaculate receives criticism in one aspect for no fault of its own
Filmed with a $9 million budget, Immaculate swept past $23.8 million at the box office, largely riding on the acting prowess of Sydney Sweeney and the direction brought forth by Michael Mohan. On April 16, close to a month after its release, the flick opened up for digital purchases and soon after brought with a unique complaint. Several viewers noted that a large portion of the movie had scenes that were too poorly lit to be watchable.
A wave of reviews mentioning this burning aspect flooded social media and questioned the director for his “comically dark” artistic preferences. Moreover, many also pointed out that it became very hard to follow the story and understand it as several scenes would just go by almost invisibly. Addressing those concerns, Mohan took to his X (formerly Twitter) handle while stating:
I know, man. This was absolutely not done intentionally. We have no control over the compression specs of each platform. It’s a real problem that truly bums me out, and after comparing them all, iTunes is the closest to what we wanted / brighter than the rest.
The statement brought to the fore that the real culprits were the codes and compression algorithms employed by various streaming platforms. In order to optimize visual clarity across various connections, many streamers process movies as per different standards, which at times, results in sub-standard performance as what happened with Immaculate.
Sydney Sweeney poured her heart out for Immaculate
The 26-year-old actress returned to collaborate with Michael Mohan as the director of Immaculate following their successful run with The Voyeurs. Moreover, it also marked her first time as a producer for any such project in Hollywood, giving her immense creative control and freedom. Furthermore, she also salvaged the script for which she had originally auditioned close to a decade ago and reworked it to fit current themes.
Exercising her strengths as a producer, she even cast her grandmothers in church scenes, adding a lasting experience to the movie’s legacy. Finally, she also left no stone unturned with her acting and gave an authentic horror performance despite her last two films, Anyone But You and Madame Web, being of completely different genres and having vast differences in acting demands.
Immaculate is available to stream on Hulu and for rent and purchase on Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, and Fandango at Home.
