SAGINAW, MI — It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail, but Michigan and one of its waterways serve as key plot points in a Hollywood horror movie recently released on streaming services.
“Immaculate,” starring up-and-coming actor Sydney Sweeney, is a film about a woman who accepts an invitation to live at a Roman Catholic convent in Italy. As horror movies go, Cecilia (played by Sweeney) discovers unexpectedly unholy secrets await her there.
So, what’s the Michigan connection?
When a roommate quizzes her on her background, Cecilia responds that she was raised in a community “outside of Detroit.”
Her origins grow more specific when she later recounts a terrifying incident when she was trapped beneath the ice of the Saginaw River. It’s an experience that later factors into Cecilia’s desperate struggle to survive the dangers facing her in Italy.
“Immaculate” briefly shows the icy river scene from her childhood. The movie offers no identifiable details specific to the mid-Michigan river, a 22-mile-long waterway that snakes through both Saginaw and Bay counties before spilling into the Saginaw Bay.
There are no indications filming took place in Michigan for that scene, or any other. The movie database website, IMDb.com, reported “Immaculate” was filmed exclusively in Italy.
It’s unclear why “Immaculate’s” creators chose the Saginaw River as a brief-but-significant setting in the movie.
The R-rated, 89-minute film was directed by Michael Mohan and written by Andrew Lobel. In publicity surrounding the film, neither contributor identified Michigan as a state where they resided or studied.
“Immaculate” was released in theaters in late March, earning $7.8 million during its first weekend in the U.S. and more than $21 million worldwide since then, according to IMDb. The film premiered during the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
Sweeney appeared as a guest on the March 2 episode of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” as part of the promotional tour for the film, which no longer is featured in mid-Michigan theaters.
“Immaculate” last week, though, was uploaded to streaming services online, where horror film fans can rent it for $9.99 on platforms such as Prime Video.
Rotten Tomatoes, the website that generates ratings for movies based on multiple critic reviews, reported 71% of 166 reviews for “Immaculate” were positive.
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