The Curse vs Immaculée: two thrillers but only one plot

Two rooms, one atmosphere. A convent in Italy, a young American woman guided by faith and trapped in the Machiavellian plans of a perverse priest. This is the story of the last two thrillers in cinema: The Curse: The Origin and Immaculée. The first takes place before the Curse saga directed by Arkasha Stevenson, the other is an independent film produced and starred by Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, Everything But You).

The Curse: The Origin, in theaters since April 10, tells the origins of the little evil boy who marked The Curse released in 1976. This new feature film retraces the journey of his mother, sister Margaret, an orphan, played by Nell Tiger Free. She joins the convent of Father Brennan whose secret project is to see her give birth to the child of the Antichrist.

In the next room, Immaculée, released three weeks earlier, narrates the life of another young girl devoted to the Church since childhood whose path crosses that of Father Sal Tedeschi, played by Alvaro Morte (La casa of papel). Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) will be drugged to undergo experiments to bring the Christ child to life. A gory production drowns the film in a bath of hemoglobin.

These two films explore the already very exploited world of films about the trials and tribulations of nuns. A genre so notable that the Americans even gave it a name: “nunsploitation”. Very popular in cinema in the 1970s in Japan and Europe, we find its spirit more recently, in Benedetta (2021) which carries this style to the Cannes Film Festival.