Not just Rome: Tuscia, Ciociaria, Agro Romano and Castelli Romani. Love has broken out between Hollywood producers promoting horror films and Lazio. Originally it was The Omen (original title Omen) 1976 film starring Gregory Peck who, between trips to the monasteries of Frusinate and bucolic Cerveteran necropolises, with the square of Santa Maria in Trastevere transformed into a Lungotevere, showed the tourist qualities of the region for the first time overseas with different eyes . Therefore not only a land of holiness and conviviality, but even the center of satanic plots and dark sects. Ultimately, an intuition that we can trace back to Bava’s Operation Fearto Fellini’s Toby Dammit and to the Avati of Night Voices. This potential offered to international horror cinema by the city of the seven hills and its surroundings actually remained under wraps for years, at least until The rite from 2011, with Anthony Hopkins, filmed in Rome and which, however, I have not yet seen. Then last year a true omen, with the burst onto the screens of The Pope’s Exorcist, with Father Gabriele Amorth played by Russell Crowe (if you didn’t know, no, it’s not a joke). It seems that the controversy started by Pierfrancesco Favino for the role of Enzo Ferrari given to a foreigner and not to him was born from the previous frustration caused by the casting of the 2023 horror film. Mainly set in Spain, the film, but focused on figure of an interpretation of the well-known exorcist who makes cornine ei marameo hey cuckoo to the nuns, as a clear demonstration of the quintessence of his Italianness. All of this, at the beginning of the film, in the streets of a postcard-like Rome where, however, one is not surprised to get shivers of fear at strange manifestations…
Not to mention the standard Lambretta.
In 2024, however, two practically identical horror films were released practically at the same time, to tell you about them: Immaculatedirected by Michael Mohan and starring Sydney Sweeney, and First Omen, by Arkasha Stevenson and which stars Nell Tiger Free as the protagonist. The gist, in both cases: an American novice lands in Rome and finds herself in a monastery where the prelates and nuns have certain unholy plans regarding her mother’s womb. This is to simplify it as much as possible, since you know very well how it goes on. Of two, First Omen it’s obviously the prequel to that Omenso it would tell in theory the story that led to a jackal being buried in a tomb in Cerveteri (in theory, in practice they don’t care much about the jackal, à la Stevenson). Instead Immaculate it’s not a prequel to anything, so it’s freer and you can’t care about putting it together ex post of the plot pieces already given and to find an explanation for everything. In fact, he hardly explains a thing and, apart from that little chat about the motive (rather ridiculous), he mainly chooses to throw it all into impressive sequences, one after the other. And on this he wins over his diabolical sister film. First Omen instead on the one hand it is keen to recall the original film, even tracing some scenes, and to faithfully fit into the logic of the story that leads to the ’76 film. Then he breaks his dick and gets pissed off and doesn’t care a little too much about logic, so much so that he makes it up a twist in the end, all female, which opens the field for a possible sequel (which however is not the one with Gregory Peck). Sequel which at this point, even if you can barely hold back a “go shit everyone” at the end of the viewing, would actually risk being even better than the first Omen (this one here, not the ’76 one). Also because the coda completely changes the register and instead of a rarefied and composed horror, from those last scenes you hope that Rodriguez will arrive to direct the sequel and transform it into a shooter type From Dusk to Dawnperhaps set in a bar that I know on Nettunense, near Cecchina, where it’s nice to stop at night on the way back from Rome and see what people are there, every time.
A nun who hangs herself by setting herself on fire, just like that, suddenly, without sense.
As I was saying, I choose between the two Immaculate without a doubt, although it cannot be said that the direction and photography of First Omen they are not well made, on the contrary. Despite the heavy burden of having to fit into a franchise, Stevenson’s film offers beautiful solutions, starting from the first scene of the arrival at Leonardo da Vinci Airport, “rebuilt” inside the splendid Palazzo dei Congressi by Adalberto Libera all ‘EUR and with a style of photography and colors that at least recalls the Fiumicino of Toby Dammit by Federico Fellini. Then there is the (unrealistic) attempt to place the story in the context of the youth protests of the 70s. The result of this attempt, banalotto, however, is ultimately less postcard-like than one might fear, also because it is not so central to the plot, in reality. Then some beautiful horror sequences First Omen it has some, above all those in the dark, next to the bed: super-classic, over-the-top, but really well made. The ending goes off the rails, unfortunately, but overall it can’t be said to be a waste. In the end you can give it two hours of viewing, if you don’t have too refined a palate.
With Immaculate instead I started with very low expectations, convinced that it would be an average and completely stupid little film jump scare and little more (and since it’s often enough for me, I don’t hold back). Then in the first sequences there is the transfer to Monte Porzio Catone, at the Castles, and the attention bar rises. Mine at least. Then the level is always kept constant by magnetic Sweeney. But this is not the only happy choice of a partly Italian and partly international cast. The role of the priest from whom you rightly expect a priest’s jokeis entrusted to Alvaro Morte (name of the century for an actor in a horror film), an old acquaintance via There House of Paper. A Spaniard who plays an Italian character in an international production. And Favino is silent.
In the previous take the block of tuff hit the toe.
In the first part of Immaculate the crescendo is very classic, however well done. Some inexplicable things happen and, as I was telling you, in the end the film doesn’t bother to explain them all in detail. Guy: who exactly are those disturbing figures with the red tights on their heads it’s not that it’s said precisely, it’s just intuited. Then, in short, everything makes us believe more and more that we are following the usual demonic/conspiracy horror film, well made, competent, but which you forget after a while. Then comes the revelation of the evil and the reason behind it and that’s the worst part, because, I tell you, it’s not much. Then the fighting begins.
And now some SPOILERS.
The whole last part of Immaculate it’s almost three films in one, or rather four, because I didn’t count the first hour and twenty of horror with demonic nuns. At one point Sydney Sweeney was almost on the verge of giving birth to the new Messiah he gets pissed and does Rambo and kills priests, mothers superiors and cardinals using crucifixes, rosaries, real nails of the true cross, while trying to escape among the catacombs under the monastery (and to me, who took me on a trip to the catacombs of Rome in elementary school, imagine how excited I am about this). The whole escape increasingly in the dark, among the damp and bare tunnels, hunted by Death, meeting the tortured Inquisition-style corpse of Benedetta Porcaroli, is already a beautiful piece of Cinema. Then our Rambo re-emerges in the ninth month Frascati countryside, all ruins and weeds, bucolic and decadent landscape (this time the Americans have understood everything). And here, in the very last seconds, the fourth film is on stage, the best one, a kind of short film in itself, a survival movie in sequence in which you see almost nothing except the close-up of Sweeney screaming like a maniac for seconds interminable and with a face covered in blood: new screaming queen for detachment from the competition. And then THE detail: a block of tuff used to crush Evil. Or rather, perhaps Evil, we don’t understand everything and this is the strength of the film. But let’s go back to the tuff. Tell me if it’s not a magnificent ending. Perfect. The whole ending of the film is great but the tuff block is just the best.
End of SPOILER.
Excuse me, did you say Frosinone?
Immaculateeven more than First Omen that after all you stay within the walls of a Roman convent with reddish walls and warm as it should be, makes you understand that you don’t need to go who knows where to experience the thrills of a gothic novel. You’ll even get chills if you discover the wrong ruin, among the thistles and the flies of the Lord of the Flies (in Tusculum I got a little curse and it took a lot of antibiotics). In Lazio, as soon as you leave the asphalt, you are likely to encounter incomprehensible remains, abandonment, weeds with Lovecraftian shapes, strange people who speak strange. And so we should be happy that international cinema valorises all this.
But it didn’t end here. We are convinced that the two films we are dealing with today are just the driving force that will drag with them a new wave of film producers among the bucolic companions de nonatrilandscape much more evocative of today’s terrors than not the very inflated Transylvania. Don’t you believe it? Here is a selection of very recent news that gives us hope for the future:
- Director Paolo Sorrentino revealed that, according to the first draft of the script, The great beauty it was supposed to be a horror film, originally. However, he did not want to reveal anything about the previously foreseen developments that would have affected the nuns and priests who remained in the film, waiting for the release of the film. Director’s Cut the final;
- Luca Guadagnino announced instead that the sequel to Bones & All It will be a road movie all set between Pontina and Santa Palomba;
- Eli Roth was spotted in Ariccia, apparently intent on looking for the ideal locations for his next film cannibal movie: the story of a little place where it is served pork alternative to the customers;
- Walter Veltroni’s next novel will have the political rise of a man at the center of the plot mayor-vampire in the Eternal City. According to some rumours, Dario Argento has already been hired for the film adaptation. Release scheduled in time for the 2025 Film Festival;
- Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli would be working on a reboot of the famous cartoon Heidi, set this time in the Lepini Mountains. Among the future adventures of the little shepherdess there is also the dangerous clash with a chupacabra which infests the Reatino area;
- Instead, a discussion is apparently underway at the capital’s city council regarding the opposition’s proposal to restore the disturbing features of the first version of the statue of John Paul II in front of Termini Station, given the rejection of the previous proposal to add at least two bronze canines.
I’m sure that if someone founded a new Hammer, nowadays, they would speak a Lazio dialect. (Lorenzo Centini)
