After small, but very memorable, roles in series like Sharp Objects, Everything Sucks! and The Handmaid's Tale, it was Euphoria the production that launched Sidney Sweeney to stardom, a journey that has continued to rise with prestigious proposals like The White Lotus or Once Upon a Time in America, the indie film Reality and strategic bets like Madame Web which she used as a plug to get distribution for the blockbuster Anyone But You.

At 26 years old, the young actress has built in the last five years a varied resume in which she combines genres and productions with diverse budgets, while producing her own projects through her company Fifty-Fifty Films.

Her big debut last year was the successful romantic comedy she starred in alongside Glen Powell and this year's has been a bet on horror cinema, which after its run in theaters arrives today on streaming: Immaculate.

During the movie's promotion, Sweeney explained that she auditioned for this film in 2014. The project fell into development limbo and was never filmed, but when she started making money after Euphoria, she decided to buy the rights to that script that had impressed her so much and she proposed to Michael Mohan to direct it.

Ten years after that audition she did when she was only 16, Sweeney premiered her first movie with credit as a producer.

'Immaculate'

Cecilia (Sweeney) leaves her life in Detroit to move to a 500-year-old convent in the remote Italian countryside. There she is welcomed by Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), who is in charge of welcoming her and introducing her to the religious routines of the place.

One day, Cecilia discovers she is pregnant. After undergoing a disturbing and thorough interrogation where she insists she has not broken her vows, she ends up being venerated. Everyone believes that her baby will be born of an immaculate conception and that the novice is pregnant, nothing more and nothing less, with the son of God.

However, what seemed like a miracle, for still preserving her virginity, turns out to hide a sinister secret that will make her desperately seek to leave that place, a twist that allows to speak of women's autonomy over their bodies and to understand Sweeney's fascination with the script since the first time she read it.

Behind and in front of the camera

Dynamically directed by Michael Mohan, whom the actress met in Everything Sucks!, and based on the script by Andrew Lobel, the movie moves smoothly between the conventions of religious horror, psychological thriller, gore and a touch of 'nunsplotation', with a transgressive, provocative and very satisfying climax.

After his foray into the genre with an episode of Tales of the Crypt, Álvaro Morte, the charismatic Professor from Money Heist, the Spanish actor plays here a controlling figure who moves in a complex duality; a role he got without the need for auditions, as it was Sweeney herself who called him and offered him to participate in the film, as Morte told EL ESPAÑOL in an interview given last May.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence