Immaculate (2024) by Michael Mohan


Director: Michael Mohan
Year: 2024
Country: USA/Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural

Plot:
Arriving at a special Italian convent, an American teen looking to stay at the location while she prepares for her upcoming views is soon inundated with a slew of visions about the convent’s diabolical true purpose behind inviting her there and fights to save herself from theri plans.

Review:

This was a really enjoyable and impressive genre effort. Among the better features of this one is the generally fantastic evolution that comes about here detailing the growing realization of her purpose there. The main setup of her arriving at the location hoping to get away from her previous life in America and finding a purpose within the church during her stay there when they come to believe she’s undergone an immaculate conception offers a wholly intriguing first half here. Not only does the initial setup offer a background about who she is, why she’s come to get away from her past, and meeting up with the various staff amongst the convent alongside the other women staying there, this all gives the kind of impressive air of secrecy that surrounds everything going on here for a generally impressive start.

By the time the immaculate pregnancy is discovered and the film starts to turn into a more prominent genre outing, this one starts to get involved with more frightening features. The initial scenes going with her struggles adapting to pregnancy and the repeated assassination attempts that take place offer a fine start to the more sinister reactions that take place as the ornate and deliberate care they start to enact evolves into the kind of action that denotes much crueler intentions. The realization that her entire purpose is designed from the very beginning and how her condition is determined to be for their benefit offers a fine motivating factor for the series of impressive sequences at the end trying to stop their plans from continuing as that offers the kind of traditional retribution found here as their barbaric experiments come to the forefront. Featuring a lot of great gore to go along with these factors, these all give the film a lot to like.

There isn’t much really wrong here but there are some slight issues present here. The main drawback with this one is the seemingly sluggish and slow-going first half that goes along with the character-building that goes on throughout here. While its delivery of key plot-points is fine enough getting to know the characters and the hints of their plans, it’s all slow-going to the point that it can feel tiresome waiting for everything to get started as it sets this up somewhat slowly with some overly familiar tropes to accomplish that. The other slight drawback found here is the sense of rushed storytelling told at the end where it seems to reveal the explanations for everything at once, with quite a lot of the purposes for everything taking place at one point so that there’s a lot of information revealed strictly here. This can be a bit underwhelming for some looking for a more coherent structure, but thankfully none of these are detrimental as they just lower it slightly.


Overview: ****.5/5
A wholly fantastic effort without much wrong with it, there’s quite a lot to like here which provides this one with far more than expected to keep it up over the minor issues present. Those who are intrigued by the concept at play, enjoy this type of mainstream genre fare, or are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here while most others out there might want to heed mild caution.

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