At the outset, Sydney Sweeney’s scream-queen star turn Immaculate, now streaming on digital, looks pretty familiar. Its basic premise of a young nun arriving at a convent in Italy and sensing something amiss is nearly identical to the set-up of the recent horror prequel The First Omen, and not dissimilar to the Nun series from the Conjuring universe. But in its final stretch, Immaculate distinguishes itself from other, similar movies by going pretty hard, pushing into a bold pro-choice metaphor that pushes back against the exploitation of women’s bodies.
Here’s a FULL SPOILER explanation of what happens in the final moments.
IMMACULATE ending explained
It’s clear from the outset that there’s something unwholesome going on at the convent where Cecelia has been mysteriously reassigned, and when she becomes pregnant early in the film despite a lack of sexual contact with anyone, she never seems to fully believe that her seemingly immaculate conception is some kind of genuine miracle. After her pregnancy progresses and her escape attempt is thwarted, Cecelia finally learns the truth: A nail from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, shown to her early in the film, actually holds blood and bone fragments, which Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), a former biologist, has used in an attempt to create a sort of Christ clone. Past botched attempts – misformed fetsuses in jars – line the secret laboratory, like the failed clones of Ripley from Alien: Resurrection. Cecelia’s pregnancy, successful os far, is growing the church’s latest attempt at creating a new messiah.
This revelation that the church is up to something nefarious isn’t exactly a shock, but it does represent a clever flip on the idea of the unhinged, secular movie scientist playing God – here, the church has taken it upon itself to intervene scientifically, attempting to jump-start the process of waiting around for a second coming. Their supposed closeness to God gives them what they see as tacit permission to muck around with scientific processes they seem likely to condemn in more secular hands.
Then, in the movie’s final 20 minutes or so – minus some slow-rolling credits, the film is only about 80 minutes long – Immaculate really uncorks. The priests brand Ceceli’s feet with crosses and imprison her, awaiting her impending birth. But when the older nun watching over her is briefly distracted, Cecelia seizes the opportunity, grabs a nearby crucifix, and bashes her head in with it before escaping her confines. From there, she continues her thematic kills by strangling a priest to death with rosary beads (and picking up the crucifixion nail for good measure). Then she heads down to the convent’s secret laboratory, where she prepares to torch all of the samples, equipment, failed experiments, and so on, by dousing it with ethanol. Tedeschi attempts to stop her, they tussle; she winds up locking him in the lab and lighting it (and him) on fire. Tedeschi then (somewhat improbably) breaks down the door locking him in the lab and, in his horrifically burned state, pursues Cecelia through the catacombs she was warned away from early in the film. He catches up to her – Cecelia is pushing forward but still in the throes of labor – and drags her back into the catacombs just before she can escape. They struggle, and eventually she produces the holy nail and stabs him to death.
Cecelia staggers out of the catacombs, out of the convent and into the serenity of nature. There, the movie arrives at its extended final shot: In an unbroken take lasting over two minutes, the camera stays primarily on Sweeney’s blood-splattered face as she gives birth, screaming in pain and distress. Off-camera, we hear the sound of a child – or something – emerging from her womb, and as Cecelia bites through the umbilical cord, we hear breathing, growling, and gurgling sounds that don’t resemble a normal human infant. With the camera still not cutting away, and only briefly showing Cecelia’s child out of focus in the background, we see Cecelia find a large rock, hoist it over her head as the camera stays on her face, hesitate slightly, and then… wham. She throws the rock down on the child (still off screen), and the movie cuts to black. That’s that.
So what does it all mean? By leaving Cecelia’s unwanted baby offscreen, the movie keeps its exact nature unnervingly unclear. But her horrified reaction and the abnormal sounds it’s emitting (which the filmmakers engineered by distorting the sounds of a sick cat) clearly signal that this is not a normal human baby. Is it another deformed clone, like we saw in the lab? Have the church scientists accidentally produced some kind of antichrist rather than their hoped-for messiah? That’s left to the imagination, though Sister Cecelia’s horrified reaction and ultimate decision – from a character who has, up until the last month of her pregnancy, exuded gentleness and faith – certainly imply that there was something monstrous about the child.
By focusing on Cecelia’s decision rather than her exact reason, Immaculate is subverting a common parent-horror trope: that parents will often side with their offspring even in the face of overwhelming terror, even if it’s something they never really wanted. Cecelia’s gruesome decision reinforces Immaculate as a pro-choice narrative, dovetailing perfectly with what we learn about Cecelia early on. When discussing why she joined the church to begin with, after surviving a potentially deadly childhood accident, Cecelia demurs on framing it as a choice at all: “I don’t think of it like that… as a decision.” For her, this is a calling, which removes any sense of agency; her forced pregnancy also forces her to make an actual decision, rather than relying on her faith for guidance that can be easily manipulated by others. In other words, she learns that even a woman devout enough to become a nun may have a decidedly pro-choice experience. (Perhaps her diminished sense of piety is telegraphed by her literal cry of “goddammit!” earlier in the movie’s final stretch.)
The ending of Immaculate probably hasn’t been designed to change any minds. If anything, it’s easy enough to picture this scene confirming the worst fears of fanatics convinced that anyone advocates for abortions at the nine-month mark, or (nonsensically) later, as one major political figure has repeatedly claimed. Instead, director Michael Mohan (who, with Sweeney, reconceived the script’s original ending) uses the shock-friendly horror genre as permission to go further than a traditional drama ever would. It might even read as satirical – if not for Sweeney’s face, never far from the camera’s lens during this extended finale, reminding the audience of the humanity that goes into seemingly impossible decisions.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
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