‘Immaculate’ star Sydney Sweeney reveals her favourite horror movies
Before the release of Michael Mohan’s Immaculate, horror wasn’t something that you would closely associate with Sydney Sweeney, the young actor who quickly became one of contemporary Hollywood’s greatest stars. Though HBO’s young adult series Euphoria was the show that forced her into the public consciousness alongside the likes of Zendaya and Jacob Elordi, horror built the foundations for Sweeney’s breakthrough.
At the age of just 12, Sweeney made her feature film debut in the objectively awful low-budget horror flick ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, a fateful release that would spark an unlikely early affiliation with the genre. Cult filmmaker John Carpenter was the next to come calling, casting the young actor in 2010’s The Ward before she went on to star in other blood-soaked frightfest’s Dead Ant, Along Came the Devil and Nocturne.
While she has plenty of experience in the genre, few horror fans will be quick to find a copy of Dead Ant on eBay, with such similar early films being awful works of low-budget cinema. Sure, you could make a case for Carpenter’s unpopular 2010 movie, but even its most ardent fans would find it difficult to defend it when compared to the director’s abundance of 20th-century classics.
Immaculate is, indeed, her most esteemed entrance into the world of horror, with director Michael Mohan crafting a story about a pious young woman whose invitation to a strange Italian convent quickly turns nightmarish, with Sweeney front and centre. Inspired, in part, by Roman Polanski’s 1968 classic Rosemary’s Baby, as well as other modern classics, such as Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, the lead players of the film haven’t kept their influences hidden.
In fact, Rosemary’s Baby made it onto Sweeney’s list of her four favourite horror movies of all time when the actor was revealing her genre picks in an interview with Letterboxd. “Love the performances in it; I think it’s just a classic horror film,” Sweeney stated of Polanski’s film that followed a young woman whose pregnancy is complicated by the stress that’s caused by her sinister new neighbours.
While the religious undertones of her choices aren’t carried through her next picks, Sweeney clearly has a fondness for strong lead female performances, picking out Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us for this reason alone. Praising Lupita Nyong’o, Sweeney calls her an “incredible actress,” highlighting the intricacies of her physical performance in the film in which she plays a mother stalked by doppelgangers.
The remainder of Sweeney’s list follows this trend, choosing Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining and John Carpenter’s Halloween, two films well known for their terrific female leads. While Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode became one of cinema’s greatest ever ‘final girls’ in Carpenter’s slasher, Shelley Duvall still shocks audiences with her notorious performance in Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s haunting horror.
Sydney Sweeney’s favourite horror movies:
- Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
- Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)
