What’s It About
On the holiest weekend of the year comes The Unholy, which follows Alice, a young hearing-impaired girl who, after a supposed visitation from the Virgin Mary, is inexplicably able to hear, speak and heal the sick. As word spreads and people from near and far flock to witness her miracles, a disgraced journalist (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hoping to revive his career visits the small New England town to investigate. When terrifying events begin to happen all around, he starts to question if these phenomena are the works of the Virgin Mary or something more sinister.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
So Evan Spiliotopoulos (screenplay) took a story (Shrine) written by James Herbert (April 8th, 1943 – March 20th, 2013) and turned it into The Unholy. Why? There was a whole year the world was shut down, and this is the best he could do. I only mention this because Evan has some promising titles in the works. Namely Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins and the sequel to Will Smith’s 2017 Netflix movie Bright, called Bright 2(of course). But until then, I guess this is his best (current) effort. If this were 20 years ago, this might be a much better film, but it’s not, and The Unholy is a tedious, been-done-before waste of ninety minutes. From the opening scene of what appears to be witch-burning in 1845 to one of the worse cinema climaxes in a long time, The Unholy was doomed before it started. Like most of us, I saw the commercials and trailers that show the “good” parts, while the advertising team thought it would help if a satanic film were released on Good Friday. None of those tricks work if the actual movie is crap. The Unholy is a textbook example of classic bad exposition – weak flashbacks and even weaker explanatory dialogue. It moves extremely slow as it tries to incorporate interest into the main cast that you don’t care about, even after you know their backstory. A journalist named Gerry Fenn has a sketchy background looking for a story to revive whatever is left of his career. He unintentionally sets off a chain of events that took so long to get to the point that by the time the complete story is revealed, no one cares. A local girl named Alice becomes the supposed vessel for the Virgin Mary. She spreads Mary’s message, and as long as you give unto her completely, you will experience a miracle. That would be exciting if it happened more than twice, not counting Alice (she gained speech and hearing). A farmer, a cow, a Bishop, conversations about the Pope, and so many other unnecessary people, I lost count. So for 90 minutes, you get a lot of uninteresting dialogs, several unimportant characters that have little to zero to do with the story, useless jump scenes, and an ending that’s more laughable than scary. When it’s over, you have no sympathy for the remaining characters.
OUR RATING – AN UNORIGINAL 2
MEDIA
- Genre – Thriller
- Street date
- Digital/DVD/Blu-Ray – June 22nd, 2021
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.39:1
- Sound – English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles – English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras
- none