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MOVIE FEATURE

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Sydney Sweeney’s rise to the heights of Hollywood has seemed to be overnight, and the past few years have certainly been huge for her. But she’s no flash in the pan, and her ascent hasn’t been without years of striving. Like most A-list actors, her career began with shonky B-movies and a string of bit parts on long-running television shows. From Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009) to Heroes (2009), Criminal Minds (2009)

and 90210 (2010), she’s forged a career from the bottom up, arriving at the top and deserving of her accolades.

Immaculate is a shocker in all the right ways. It's a grotesque and provocative horror movie that takes the viewer on a descent into depths of depravity. Words Glenn Cochrane NUN’S THE WORD

persona she has cultivated in the public eye. Mohan and Sweeney, longtime friends, have collaborated on various projects over the years, notably the film The Voyeurs (2021), and it was Sweeney who introduced the project to Mohan. “It actually goes back a long way to Andrew Lobel,” he explains. “He actually wrote it about 18 years ago. It was in the studio system at one point, and Sydney auditioned for it about ten years ago. And, like many projects, it fell apart before it went into production. She had always thought about it and after Euphoria season two her fans were like, 'You gotta do a horror movie'.

I t tells the story of Sister Cecilia, a young American nun who accepts an invitation to take up residency at a reclusive convent in rural Italy. The property was established to house terminally and mentally ill nuns, and no sooner does Cecilia arrive, than she begins to notice peculiarities about the place. When she becomes pregnant while still virginal, the convent's hierarchy must do everything within their power to protect the unborn child - who they believe to be the second coming of Christ - from mentally deranged nuns, jealous of the Sister being the chosen one. While audiences and critics have recognised Immaculate as a modern take on the classic nunsploitation genre, director Michael Mohan confesses to STACK that the genre didn't cross his mind during the making of the film. “I didn't come at it from that perspective,” he explains with amusement. “It's interesting now sort of realising that we accidentally made a nunsploitation movie. Actually, one

Director Michael Mohan

She had always been tracking the script, so she reached out to Andrew and basically said, 'Hey man, can I try getting this back up off the ground?'. “They worked on the script a little bit and then she sent it to me. And when she sent it to me she was basically like, 'I am either making this movie with or without you. I have a small window in my schedule, so I have to be out by a specific date because I have to go shoot this other movie called Anyone But You . So, I start reading it. And I was really nervous to read it because I wanted to love it. I wanted to feel like I could do something with it, and I wanted to feel like I was right for it. “And when I got to a key reveal that happens in the middle of the story, I wasn't expecting it at all, and I realised that we could do some damage with it!” he says with relish. “I had a few ideas that I wanted to implement, some of which were pretty major, but she was on board, the producers were on board, the financiers were on board, and three months later I was on the ground in Rome, prepping.”

of the changes we made to the script was that originally she was a high school kid whose parents died and she was sent to this religious school, where the story took place. "But my main thing was that now that Sydney

Sweeney is older, let's make her a nun. Which also helps with the whole 'Sydney Sweeney is a virgin' side of things too,” he laughs, alluding to the desirable

Sydney Sweeney is trained in MMA DYK?

• Immaculate is out Jun 12

Sydney Sweeney

jbhifi.com.au

10 JUNE 2024