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The true showstopper of Sydney Sweeney’s new horror movie Immaculate has to be the incredibly intense and bloody final scene. But what will shock audiences more is that it was shot in one take, and, as the star says, without any rehearsal or preparation at all.
Spoilers for Immaculate follow.
"We didn't rehearse. We didn't prep it, it was more of…we were tight on location and time and set up," says the Madame Web star, "And so we're just like, 'Okay, we'll start the camera here, we'll walk over here and come back.' And (the director) Mike was like, 'Do you want to rehearse?' and I said, 'No let's just go for it and see what happens.'"
Immaculate follows American nun Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) as she moves to a remote convent in the Italian countryside, only to mysteriously become pregnant presumably via immaculate conception. But what was first thought to be a holy miracle, soon turns out to be a blood-soaked nightmare.
Throughout the entire film, we feel pure tension and paranoia build, as does Cecilia’s trauma and transformation, which all come to a head in one brutal final scene.
Those who have seen the film will agree that having no plan or set rehearsal for such a scene is quite a feat, possibly earning Sweeney, who also produced the flick, the title of the genre’s new scream queen. For those who have yet to catch Immaculate in theatres, without giving too much away, the single-shot finale sees Sweeney quite literally dripping with blood and fighting for her life, reminiscent of Sally Hardesty at the end of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
On the one-take scene, director Micheal Mohan confirms, "We just sort of let it rip, and what's in the movie is take one. We did three other takes as safeties. But yeah, she nailed it on take one. And that's what's in the movie." Now that’s what we call a true final girl.
Aside from the logistics of the scene, the content is quite graphic but fails to show clearly one key piece of the story - the product of the immaculate conception. Mohan has a reason for this: "I want to encourage people to think of it like maybe what she's destroying is a concept or an idea, maybe it represents something larger. I think if I showed it, the allegorical implications would not be there."
With or without the inclusion of that one small detail, the finale as a whole is enough to shake even some of the most hardcore horror fans, but this is necessary to the movie and what the team intended for all along as Mohan explains, "As a horror fan, when I go to the movies, I don't want them to push the envelope, I want them to rip the envelope to shreds. That's what I want out of this movie."
Immaculate is in theatres now. For more, check out our writer’s opinion piece on why we’re so obsessed with nuns in horror movies. For more thrills and chills, see our list of the best horror movies, or keep up to date with upcoming horror movies heading your way this year.
