It’s so flagrantly lazy and clunky in most everything that it presents to the audience that I genuinely felt like I was a victim of time theft on the job watching this (Douglas, you will get my invoice). Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures.įrankly put, The Unholy is one of the worst studio horror films I’ve seen in a long time. William Sadler as Father Hagan in Evan Spilotopoulos’ THE UNHOLY. But as Gerry discovers from covering the story, the forces at hand in Alice’s miracles are of a much more sinister nature. When the town discovers that the tree has given her visions of Mary, healing her disability and giving her the power to heal other sick people, the world flocks to her as a beacon of God’s word. Later that night, Gerry discovers Alice (Cricket Brown), a devout Catholic, and deaf-mute young woman from the small town praying and speaking at the tree where the doll was destroyed. While trying to stage the scene to make something out of the story, he accidentally destroys an old “Kern Baby” doll found chained to a tree. Whoopsies…I gave this film too much credit.ĭisgraced journalist Gerald Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) travels to a small New England town to cover an ultimately fruitless story of cow mutilation for a trashy occult news site. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Gerry Fenn and Katie Aselton as Natalie Gates in Evan Spilotopoulos’ THE UNHOLY.

Regardless of that context, with Raimi behind the scenes, talented actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan headlining the film, and source material from James Herbert’s novel Shrine, I had no reason to doubt the film beyond its similarities to Saint Maud, which I mostly just attribute to poor timing due to COVID. This isn’t to say that it’s the end-all-be-all of religious horror by any means, but having something rock so hard makes whatever comes after it have to fill big shoes, and the Sam Raimi-produced The Unholy is our metaphorical sacrificial lamb in this scenario. The beauty of that film came in that, while it’s a bit more slow burn than a studio horror film, it actually built up to something strange, horrifying, and, in the last bit of breath the film had left, something truly haunting. It represents the best that British horror has to offer, with that shocking little A24 flair that fits it very well into its catalog of horror films. Saint Maud is one of my favorite films I’ve seen this year, and I think it’s a damn shame how A24 treated it by hocking it to EPIX, of all streamers, for its tiny release. “The Unholy” is a painful, sacrilegious experience. Home › Recommendation › Home Release › “The Unholy” is a painful, sacrilegious experience.

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