Warning: The following article contains major spoilers for Immaculate.
We’re not even close to the ominous Halloween season yet, and already a fresh-faced horror extravaganza is taking the genre by storm. We’re talking about Immaculate, of course, which is currently reminding the spooky community why the religious sub-genre is so powerful.
From its shocking twist at the end to its unforgettable performance from star Sydney Sweeney, Immaculate dives head-first into the obstacles presented to Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) at the hands of the near-perfect convent that she blindly devotes her faith to. However, things inevitably take a turn for the sinister worst, with Sister Cecilia soon uncovering a jaw-dropping “operation” chock-full of horrid secrets led by Father Sal Tedeschi. From there, Sister Cecilia will seemingly stop at nothing to prevent the convent from getting away with its traumatizing antics.
So as Immaculate continues to enact heaps of praise and acclaim — including a favorable 78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — let’s dive in and explore how exactly the spine-tingling horror project concluded.
The ending of Immaculate, explained
Towards the beginning of the movie, Sister Cecilia discovers that she is pregnant, which is a shock given that she’s a virgin. Upon her realization, strange occurrences begin to happen to the young woman of faith — including vomiting up a tooth and witnessing other women in the convent get either their tongue cut out or jump to their death. Eventually, Sister Cecilia discovers a secretive laboratory in the basement of the convent, where Father Tedeschi reveals that he has obsessively been collecting DNA to create a “new” Jesus.
From there, the audience learns that Sister Cecilia likely got pregnant against her will due to the experimenting and specimens found in the lab. Realizing the truth, Sister Cecilia is worried that she will be executed and discarded once her baby is born — especially if the baby truly turns out to be another Jesus. The entire ordeal spooks Sister Cecilia, resulting in her burning down the lab, killing Father Tedeschi, and presumably “killing” the newborn “baby.”
As she goes to crush the baby with a stone, the screen cuts to black, leaving an open interpretation of the movie’s actual ending. Before the screen cuts, however, the baby’s breathing is undoubtedly strange, hinting that perhaps Sister Cecilia gave birth to something other than a human.
While some film buffs have insisted that the horror film is nothing but that, others have interpreted the movie as a message of a woman’s autonomy and her own right to choose to have a baby or not. Either way, it’s a horror movie that you don’t want to miss.