Editorials
Immaculate Scream Queen: Sydney Sweeney’s Most Horrific Roles
In every generation, there is a scream queen–an actress known for starring in horror films who comes to embody the genre landscape of her time. From Janet Leigh and her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Michelle Gellar to Maika Monroe, these women often originate a beloved character or star in a variety of cutting edge films, pushing the boundaries as cinema evolves.
The jury’s still out on which Gen Z actress will ascend to the scream queen throne, but Sydney Sweeney is making a strong case for her legacy. Though not exclusively known for horror, this versatile actress specializes in creating fearsome characters that break the mold set by her predecessors. With her wide eyes and angelic smile, Sweeney has a knack for luring us in with the perception of innocence only to shock us with a cutting remark or withering glare.
In Immaculate, Sweeney enters the taboo world of pregnancy horror with her most challenging character to date. Cecilia is a young novitiate whose path to becoming a nun is derailed by the discovery that she may be carrying the child of God in her womb. Directed by Michael Mohan, the film is a blood-soaked battle between good and evil with Cecilia trapped somewhere in between.
Yet Sweeney excels in this type of ambiguity, often blindsiding audiences with a villainous turn or devastating death. She’s spent the last 15 years deconstructing her girl next door persona with an impressive resume boasting horrific roles from film and television of all genres. In anticipation of Immaculate, Bloody Disgusting has compiled her most terrifying turns — even outside of the genre.
Alice – The Ward (2010)
Sweeney’s acting career was born out of horror. Her first film credit was a small role in the 2009 horror comedy ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, followed by a handful of scary shorts and appearances on Heroes and Criminal Minds. In 2010, however, Sweeney nabbed a role in The Ward, John Carpenter’s eagerly anticipated return to the director’s chair. Sweeney plays a small but pivotal role as a younger version of the film’s supernatural threat through periodic flashbacks that find her chained in a dirty basement. Sweeney makes the most out of a limited role and demonstrates an uncanny ability to dance between the boundaries of villain and victim. As a captive, she is clearly no threat, but her disarming eyes hint at a lurking malevolence just waiting to emerge.
Emaline – Everything Sucks! (2018)
Sweeney would spend the next eight years building a name for herself in film and TV, appearing in B-movies like Spiders and Held while booking guest spots on prominent shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Pretty Little Liars. In 2018, Sweeney landed a major role in the Netflix series Everything Sucks! created by Ben York Jones and Immaculate director Michael Mohan. Set in 1996, this quirky series follows high school freshman Luke (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) and his fellow AV Club members as they feud with older students from the Drama Club. Sweeney plays Emaline, a vicious mean girl who dedicates her life to taking Luke and his nerdy friends down. As the outwardly hostile but inwardly frightened girl, Sweeney brings both heart and relatability to Emaline, essentially laying out the blueprint that leads to her international stardom.
Ashley – Along Came the Devil (2018)
This year also saw Sweeney star in more traditional horror fare with Jason DeVan’s horror film Along Came the Devil. Sweeney leads the cast as Ashely, a young teen recently removed from the home of her abusive father. With her sister off to college and her mother long dead, Ashley moves in with her Aunt Tanya (Jessica Barth) and reconnects with childhood friends. While trying to impress her new classmates, Ashley takes part in a reckless séance and inadvertently opens the door for an evil force. As the demonic entity takes possession of her body, Ashley begins to act with violence and profanity. The film itself is a standard possession story, but Sweeney is a bright spot as the tormented victim and practices the sweetly devilish charm she would go on to perfect in future roles.
Eden – The Handmaid’s Tale (2018)
Sweeney followed this starring turn with a memorable role on one of TV’s buzziest shows. Season two of The Handmaid’s Tale introduces Eden, a devout child bride forced to marry a man she barely knows. As an Econowife, she’s been raised to believe she exists to serve her husband and bear his children, abandoning her own desires to fulfill God’s purpose for her life. But regardless of intention, this teenager finds herself drawn to a cute boy who gives her the affection her aloof husband will not. She engages in a romantic dalliance and winds up paying a steep price for the crime of infidelity. Betrayed by her own father, Eden is publicly executed when she refuses to “renounce her sin.” This quiet act of courage and defiance sparks similar rebellion in the dehumanized women forced to watch her drown. Sweeney may play an innocent character, but her shocking death remains one of the show’s most upsetting and horrific moments.
Alice – Sharp Objects (2018)
In addition to this memorable role, Sweeney would make a brief but pivotal appearance in another of the year’s most talked about shows. Like its name foretells, HBO’s Sharp Objects is an unflinching adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s debut novel and a jaw-dropping exploration of self-harm and addiction. Sweeney appears in a series of flashbacks that serve as a reference point for Camille (Amy Adams), the story’s troubled protagonist. Roommates in a residential treatment center, Alice and Camille quickly bond over music and a shared understanding of the overwhelming desire to mutilate their own bodies. Tragically, Camille discovers Alice’s lifeless body moments after drinking drain cleaner. Consumed with shock and grief, Camille desperately tries to slit her wrists with a loose screw from a nearby toilet as hospital staff wrestle her to safety. It’s a brutal moment.
Snake – Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
Sweeney’s next high profile role would be a small part in one of the most exciting films of 2019: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is a revisionist history of 1969 Hollywood that garnered 10 Oscar nominations and two wins. Sweeney plays Snake, a younger member of the deadly Manson Family cult who’ve laid claim to Spahn Ranch on the outskirts of town. Looking out from a dirty screen door, Snake exudes menace even though we don’t yet know the true nature of the group’s plans. Sweeney’s character is loosely based on a real life member of the Manson family, Dianne Lake, who spent two years with Manson and testified against a number of his followers. Sweeney doesn’t do anything overtly evil in this minimal role, but her seductive and confronting eyes are enough to tell us that something is very wrong on the grounds of Spahn Ranch.
Juliet – Nocturne (2020)
Sweeney’s next feature film appearance would be in a leading role. Following her breakout portrayal of Cassie Howard in Sam Levinson’s Euphoria, the actress starred as Juliet in Nocturne, the fourth installment in Amazon Studios’ Welcome to Blumhouse series. Overshadowed by her more talented sister, Juliet begins to have sinister visions when she stumbles on a cryptic notebook related to the death of a fellow student. This faustian horror film follows Juliet through betrayal and violence as she weighs love for her twin sister with an overwhelming desire for perfection. In a villainous yet relatable performance, Sweeney shows that she can maintain the audience’s sympathies while doing the most despicable things.
Olivia – The White Lotus (2021)
Sweeney’s appearance on HBO’s The White Lotus would solidify her status as one of Hollywood’s most versatile young stars. Olivia is a privileged college student on a Hawaiian vacation with her ultra-wealthy businesswoman mother and 2nd generation famous father. Dubbed the “scariest girls on TV,” she and her friend Paula (Brittany O’Grady) spend their days doing drugs and eviscerating fellow guests with sharp words and thinly veiled insults. But a rift forms between the cynical friends when Paula begins sleeping with a hunky member of the staff. No longer the center of attention, Olivia vows revenge and begins subtly torturing her friend with snide comments and viscous barbs. Though never outright dangerous, Olivia wields her unearned power like a knife and doesn’t hesitate to cut those around her to smithereens.
Reality Winner – Reality (2023)
Hoping to take her career in an unexpected direction, Sweeney auditioned and fought for the titular role in Tina Satter’s unsettling HBO docu-drama Reality. We first meet Sweeney’s Reality Winner as she watches news coverage of James Comey’s termination from her desk at a military contracting organization. Later, she’s surprised at home by FBI agents with a warrant to search her apartment for evidence that she leaked a classified document proving Russian interference with the 2016 election. The real Winner, a former U.S. Air Force veteran and NSA translator, would go on to serve more than five years in federal prison, the steepest sentence ever given to an American whistleblower. Satter’s film is based largely on transcripts of a conversation recorded as Winner is taken into custody, reminding us that this woman portrayed in the news as a criminal mastermind is in actuality a relatable 25 year old just trying to be a good citizen. Of all Sweeney’s terrifying roles, this may be the most horrific simply because every bit of the nerve-wracking story is true.
Cassie Howard – Euphoria (2019 to Present)
When we first meet Cassie Howard on the debut season of Euphoria, she’s a sweet girl longing for the father she lost to substance abuse. Dating a college football player, she faces her share of heartbreak, but the ingénue takes a devious turn in the Season 2 premiere when she begins sleeping with her best friend’s ex. Carrying this secret for much of the season, Cassie explodes when she watches a recreation of her most painful moments unfold on stage as the subject of her sister’s school play. With her relationship in shambles and nothing left to lose, Cassie walks down the aisle on a kamikaze mission to ruin the performance and humiliate her younger sister in return. Though not a villainous character, Cassie becomes an unpredictable and catastrophic force in this combustible friend group. There’s no telling what her self-destructive eyes will fall on next and who will suffer in the collateral damage
Photo Credit: Fabian Lavino courtesy of NEON
In the 15 years since her first screen credit, Sweeney has perfected the art of deceptive horror. Whether bringing fear to innocuous comedies or playing compelling victims in outright horror, Sweeney constantly keeps us guessing in one uniquely shocking role after another. Her magnetic turn as a pregnant nun in Immaculate is both the culmination of a long journey through the horror genre and an exciting harbinger of roles to come. With two upcoming thrillers currently in post-production and Season 3 of Euphoria due in 2025, it seems the chameleonic actress will likely be surprising us with more horrific roles for the foreseeable future.
Witness unholy horror. IMMACULATE starring Sydney Sweeney is in theaters this Friday. Get tickets now.
Soon after the New Hollywood generation took over the entertainment industry, they started having children. And more than any filmmakers that came before—they were terrified. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Eraserhead (1977), The Brood (1979), The Shining (1980), Possession (1981), and many others all deal, at least in part, with the fears of becoming or being a parent. What if my child turns out to be a monster? is corrupted by some evil force? or turns out to be the fucking Antichrist? What if I screw them up somehow, or can’t help them, or even go insane and try to kill them? Horror has always been at its best when exploring relatable fears through extreme circumstances. A prime example of this is Larry Cohen’s 1974 monster-baby movie It’s Alive, which explores the not only the rollercoaster of emotions that any parent experiences when confronted with the difficulties of raising a child, but long-standing questions of who or what is at fault when something goes horribly wrong.
Cohen begins making his underlying points early in the film as Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) discusses the state of the world with a group of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. They discuss the “overabundance of lead” in foods and the environment, smog, and pesticides that only serve to produce roaches that are “bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.” Frank comments that this is “quite a world to bring a kid into.” This has long been a discussion point among people when trying to decide whether to have kids or not. I’ve had many conversations with friends who have said they feel it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a violent, broken, and dangerous world, and I certainly don’t begrudge them this. My wife and I did decide to have children but that doesn’t mean that it’s been easy.
Immediately following this scene comes It’s Alive’s most famous sequence in which Frank’s wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) is the only person left alive in her delivery room, the doctors clawed and bitten to death by her mutant baby, which has escaped. “What does my baby look like!? What’s wrong with my baby!?” she screams as nurses wheel her frantically into a recovery room. The evening that had begun with such joy and excitement at the birth of their second child turned into a nightmare. This is tough for me to write, but on some level, I can relate to this whiplash of emotion. When my second child was born, they came about five weeks early. I’ll use the pronouns “they/them” for privacy reasons when referring to my kids. Our oldest was still very young and went to stay with my parents and we sped off to the hospital where my wife was taken into an operating room for an emergency c-section. I was able to carry our newborn into the NICU (natal intensive care unit) where I was assured that this was routine for all premature births. The nurses assured me there was nothing to worry about and the baby looked big and healthy. I headed to where my wife was taken to recover to grab a few winks assuming that everything was fine. Well, when I awoke, I headed back over to the NICU to find that my child was not where I left them. The nurse found me and told me that the baby’s lungs were underdeveloped, and they had to put them in a special room connected to oxygen tubes and wires to monitor their vitals.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. In the film, Lenore says, “maybe it’s all the pills I’ve been taking that brought this on.” Frank muses aloud about how he used to think that Frankenstein was the monster, but when he got older realized he was the one that made the monster. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles. I have made plenty of “if only” statements about myself over the years. “If only I hadn’t had to work so much, if only I had been around more when they were little.” Mothers may ask themselves, “did I have a drink, too much coffee, or a cigarette before I knew I was pregnant? Was I too stressed out during the pregnancy?” In other words, most parents can’t help but wonder if it’s all their fault.
At one point in the film, Frank goes to the elementary school where his baby has been sighted and is escorted through the halls by police. He overhears someone comment about “screwed up genes,” which brings about age-old questions of nature vs. nurture. Despite the voices around him from doctors and detectives that say, “we know this isn’t your fault,” Frank can’t help but think it is, and that the people who try to tell him it isn’t really think it’s his fault too. There is no doubt that there is a hereditary element to the kinds of mental illness struggles that my children and I deal with. But, and it’s a bit but, good parenting goes a long way in helping children deal with these struggles. Kids need to know they’re not alone, a good parent can provide that, perhaps especially parents that can relate to the same kinds of struggles. The question of nature vs. nurture will likely never be entirely answered but I think there’s more than a good chance that “both/and” is the case. Around the midpoint of the film, Frank agrees to disown the child and sign it over for medical experimentation if caught or killed. Lenore and the older son Chris (Daniel Holzman) seek to nurture and teach the baby, feeling that it is not a monster, but a member of the family.
It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case. It’s Alive asks “what if a ‘monster’ comes from a good home?” In this case is it society, environmental factors, or is it the lead, smog, and pesticides? It is almost impossible to know, but the ending of the film underscores an uncomfortable truth—even monsters have parents.
As the film enters its third act, Frank joins the hunt for his child through the Los Angeles sewers and into the L.A. River. He is armed with a rifle and ready to kill on sight, having divorced himself from any relationship to the child. Then Frank finds his baby crying in the sewers and his fatherly instincts take over. With tears in his eyes, he speaks words of comfort and wraps his son in his coat. He holds him close, pats and rocks him, and whispers that everything is going to be okay. People often wonder how the parents of those who perform heinous acts can sit in court, shed tears, and defend them. I think it’s a complex issue. I’m sure that these parents know that their child has done something evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still their baby. Your child is a piece of yourself formed into a whole new human being. Disowning them would be like cutting off a limb, no matter what they may have done. It doesn’t erase an evil act, far from it, but I can understand the pain of a parent in that situation. I think It’s Alive does an exceptional job placing its audience in that situation.
Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair. At heart, it is still a monster movie and filled with a sense of fun and a great deal of pitch-black humor. In one of its more memorable moments, a milkman is sucked into the rear compartment of his truck as red blood mingles with the white milk from smashed bottles leaking out the back of the truck and streaming down the street. Just after Frank agrees to join the hunt for his baby, the film cuts to the back of an ice cream truck with the words “STOP CHILDREN” emblazoned on it. It’s a movie filled with great kills, a mutant baby—created by make-up effects master Rick Baker early in his career, and plenty of action—and all in a PG rated movie! I’m telling you, the ’70s were wild. It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well.
Which was Larry Cohen’s specialty. Cohen made all kinds of movies, but his most enduring have been his horror films and all of them tackle the social issues and fears of the time they were made. God Told Me To (1976), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985) are all great examples of his socially aware, low-budget, exploitation filmmaking with a brain and It’s Alive certainly fits right in with that group. Cohen would go on to write and direct two sequels, It Lives Again (aka It’s Alive 2) in 1978 and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987 and is credited as a co-writer on the 2008 remake. All these films explore the ideas of parental responsibility in light of the various concerns of the times they were made including abortion rights and AIDS.
Fifty years after It’s Alive was initially released, it has only become more relevant in the ensuing years. Fears surrounding parenthood have been with us since the beginning of time but as the years pass the reasons for these fears only seem to become more and more profound. In today’s world the conversation of the fathers in the waiting room could be expanded to hormones and genetic modifications in food, terrorism, climate change, school and other mass shootings, and other threats that were unknown or at least less of a concern fifty years ago. Perhaps the fearmongering conspiracy theories about chemtrails and vaccines would be mentioned as well, though in a more satirical fashion, as fears some expectant parents encounter while endlessly doomscrolling Facebook or Twitter. Speaking for myself, despite the struggles, the fears, and the sadness that sometimes comes with having children, it’s been worth it. The joys ultimately outweigh all of that, but I understand the terror too. Becoming a parent is no easy choice, nor should it be. But as I look back, I can say that I’m glad we made the choice we did.
I wonder if Frank and Lenore can say the same thing.
Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey Man’ Is Now Available to Watch at Home!
‘Infested’ Review – One of the Best Spiders Attack Horror Movies in Years
Five Underseen Vampire Horror Movies to Stream This Week
‘Stream’ – Horror Movie from the Team Behind ‘Terrifier’ Sets August Theatrical Release
Limited Edition ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ Monster High Doll Releasing This Week!
You must be logged in to post a comment.