| The Unholy (2021) | |
| Director: | Evan Spiliotopoulos |
| Cast: | Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Cricket Brown, William Sadler, Diogo Morgado |
| Release Date: | 31 March 2021 |
| Genre: | Horror |
| IMDB: | 5/10 |
The Unholy Plot
The Unholy is set in a small town where people are very religious. Alice, a mute girl inexplicably gains back her voice & the power to heal the sick after the Virgin Mary allegedly visited her. As word spreads, people began to witness her miracle. A disgraced journalist visits the small New England town to investigate the wonder of this young girl. However, as strange events start to occur it makes him soon wonder if these phenomena are the result of something more sinister.
The Unholy Review
You should never watch a Horror film with a rating of 5 or anything below 6. I truly believe this idea; still watching Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the trailer got me excited. I was surprised to see the IMDB rating but thought to myself, “Hey, it’s JD Morgan, how bad can it be!” I got what I deserved, it was really really bad. You will be surprised to see the quality of the overall movie that is produced by a brand like SONY.
Surely the movie gets a good story although, it did arise controversy among certain religious communities for portraying Mother Mary in an unwelcome way. This is a spiritual story that addresses the existence of the Virgin Mary in the form of a different entity; you know when you start worshipping evil thinking it’s the God who visits you, it’s more like that. The character Alice (played by Cricket Brown) gets visits by an entity that appears itself as something pure, something good. She gets back her voice, & the ability to cure incurable diseases immediately. A voice that always tells her in the head to distribute its messages. But little did the girl knows that it is actually a force of evil presenting itself in an acceptable way. A spirit who demands her lost respect & praise from humanity.
Now keeping this fact aside, the movie gets a very bad direction. The starting was good & convincing as it opens with the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft in 1845 in Banfield, Massachusetts, and then the present story starts introducing Jeffrey Morgan as Gerry Fenn (the protagonist of the story). He played his part well- an alcoholic, disgraced, fraud journalist hunting for a story, instead of when he gets involved with Alice’s case, he gradually turns into a man who cares about others. What started with good & intriguing imagery soon descends into general, unnecessary jump scares, a poor CGI spirit & a whole lot of struggles to fit this movie into the genre.
In modern horror films, portraying a ghost has become risky given the audience is experienced. When they are watching a horror movie, they expect different kinds of stuff & not an old-fashioned, bad CGI ghost, with long fingers & moving as if the legs are broken. People are tired of watching the Exorcist style walking ghosts in modern movies & that’s a fact. The scary part of the story has been very poorly executed that makes the movie boring even for a Morgan fan. And too many jump scares & a whole lot of predictable genre scenes make it a shabby watch.
