The Culture Warrior Urge to Possess Sydney Sweeney

'Immaculate' and the men who think Sweeney's body is their anti-woke mascot.

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Over at The Haunt, Jonathan Greenaway has written an interesting piece about the distinction between Catholic and Protestant horror movies.

Certain parts of Catholicism have a cinematic quality that works better in horror than boring old Protestantism, to be sure. But Greenaway goes deeper, arguing that Protestant and Catholic horror have different thematic interests. He says that Jonathan Edwards’ famous “Sinners in the Hands of Angry God” sermon lays out a blueprint for Protestant horror, one of humans as ever corruptible and God as always ready to pounce. 

“If Catholic horror presupposes the reality of a spiritual conflict between good and evil that may endanger your soul, Protestant horror sees the world as concealing a terrifying truth — you are alone before God, in a terrifying world that you cannot trust and cannot depend upon.” 

You can see this type of Protestant horror in everything from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Robert Eggers’ The VVitch. The heroes are their own villains in these stories. Total depravity is the thing going bump in the night. The real monster was inside us all along.¹

I thought about that after watching Immaculate, Michael Mohan’s new horror flick about one nun’s very distressing ordeal at a spooky convent. It’s not bad. The movie is handsomely shot and gets in and out in a cool 90 minutes. There’s a long stretch in the middle that relies a little too heavily on herky-jerky jump scares, but I respect any horror movie that goes bugnuts in the third act, and Immaculate delivers in spades there. 

These movies rise and fall on the strength of their scream queens, and Sydney Sweeney’s got the goods. I appreciated how much agency the script gives Sweeney’s Sister Cecilia (there are shades of Laura in J. A. Bayona’s The Orphanage). Without getting into spoiler territory, bad people have sinister designs for Sister Cecilia and, more specifically, her body, but she puts up much more of a fight than a lot of classic horror girls who just stand there screaming until Jason lops their head off. 

It probably wasn’t intentional, but it’s hard not to think of the parallels between the movie’s thematic interests and Sweeney’s actual life right now. Just like in Immaculate, a lot of guys see Sweeney’s body as a tool for their cause and, just like in Immaculate, her dignity and personhood aren’t part of the plan. 

I’m referring, of course, to the very weird number of high profile conservative guys who have decided that Sweeney’s body is an avatar of anti-wokeness. I hesitate to wade too deep into this because the last thing this poor woman needs is another man writing about her rack. I only do bring it up because it highlights an extremely dark strain of contemporary masculinity and somebody’s gotta tell these people to knock it off!