Her turning murderer of multiple people. She didn't want to so much as kill a chicken. And I get that she did later in her desperate ploy. But then the way she beat the one woman to death while she was lying on the ground didn't seem plausible. She'd already hit her and disabled her, the woman was lying on the ground. So Cecilia is free to escape from there. But instead she bashes the woman's face until it's crushed. Then she goes up behind the priest and strangles him to death. When she was in the room with the equipment and lit it, burning Father Tedeschi, that seemed plausible. But the prior two murders not so much. Not that any of them didn't deserve it, but I didn't buy her turning into this brutal avenger. And then the end scene? It's still a human baby, it's not the fucking devil or antri-christ. There's nothing supernatural in this movie. So we're supposed to buy her bashing a just born baby to death? She sells that last action with her face, so we can imagine what she is doing without seeing it. I just didn't buy her character, who seemed sincere in her faith, taking that step, or the others I mentioned.
reply
share
Filmtenk2 (3386)
a month ago
I could see her bashing the nun to death. The priest said to her in confession something like "If we're wrong why doesn't God stop us." So Sydney Sweeny's char was becoming God's judgement which she never wanted but the situation brought out of her. I maybe wish she dispatched the priest a different way, that would be tough to do pregnant. He didn't put up much of a struggle.
Ending scene, we don't know what came out of her, how human or devil it looked, how long it would or wouldn't have existed in misery before dying. Maybe this was her in confident God judgement mode.
reply
share
agentalbert (2363)
a month ago
It didn't seem realistic to me if that's what she was supposedly thinking. I can see her killing in self-defense, but not much beyond that. To go from gentle sister Cecilia to some holy avenger who believes they are delivering God's judgement on earth? Nah. That would take an insane sociopath with a giant case of hubris, and she wasn't presented anything of the sort.
Why would the baby at the end be anything other than a baby? This wasn't a supernatural movie.
reply
share
Filmtenk2 (3386)
a month ago
She went through 9 months of torture basically. Motherhood might have transformed her into a survivor.
The baby at the end, if you heard it, sounded like a cat with breathing problems to me. It's up to the viewer to interpret & decide.
reply
share
TearofLys (2398)
a month ago
That was a very hard to swallow character turn. She went from scared little girl in the beginning to a big-boobed Jason Bourne by the end.
reply
share
Filmtenk2 (3386)
a month ago
Like I said the rosary bead strangle didn't quite work for me. Every rosary I've ever come across never would have withstood the force it took to garrote that old priest. Everything else seemed within reason if I recall (except for the near c-section from the young priest).
reply
share
FilmBuff (6707)
a month ago
I thought that was more or less the point-- she lost her mind. After 9 months of mental and physical abuse she snapped. That's why they showed her refusal to kill a chicken. It set up the later scenes where she had no qualms about killing her torturers. As for the baby, well, we don't know what she birthed. It didn't sound human. We're left to guess whether she'd truly lost her mind to the point that she'd kill an infant, or if she was killing a demon, or if she didn't kill anything at all but instead let it live at the last second.
reply
share