‘The Unholy’ involves the investigation and phenomenon surrounding a hearing impaired girl Alice (Cricket Brown) who is claiming to be able to communicate with the virgin Mary. This is sending shockwaves through the small town as Alice can perform miracles in Mary’s name, and the church leaders while eager to debunk this are baffled by the miracle. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays a reporter Gerry Fenn who is covering this story but as he learns more about Alice, perhaps the unseen force helping her is coming from a place of evil and darkness.
Where the film really hits well is in its overall concept and acting. First scene of the film starts you in a very unsettling and disturbed place and director Evan Spiliotopoulos does an excellent job of the sound design to ramp up the tension. The concept that a demon would show up and appear as an angel performing miracles is absolutely terrifying to me, and something that was explored for the most part fairly well.
The acting by both Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Cricket Brown is good, Gerry Fenn is a character looking for redemption and a shot at fame again in his field, after something happened that severely hurt his credibility. I really love seeing Jeffrey Dean Morgan in more films so keep it coming!
The main issue with ‘The Unholy’ is from its scares. Most all of the big scary moments are jump scares, and don’t really enhance or move the plot along but are just put in places throughout the film to evenly pace the scares so you aren’t bored. But that’s the thing, because this film is not boring at all and could be much stronger if the scares weren’t so uninspired and lackluster. There are a lot of CGI effects that don’t look rendered enough to be scary.I still found myself holding onto my seat throughout so I can at least say it is very unsettling and will creep you out, just don’t expect it to be the new ‘Exorcist’.
Overall, Screen Gems either has horrible or epic timing by putting out a Horror film revolving the mother of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. I admire the guts and think that’s honestly going to be something that might draw someone to watch it because of the extra scare factor. There are some great ideas in this but the executions doesn’t quite live up to them. Still, if you love horror and wanna watch something over the weekend give it a shot and let me know what you think. In the meantime, check out my video review below!
