The Unholy
Director: Evan Spiliotopoulos
Writer: Evan Spiliotopoulos
Based on: James Herbert‘s book Shrine
Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Cricket Brown, William Sadler, Katie Aselton, Cary Elwes, Diogo Morgado, Bates Wilder, Marina Mazepa
Seen on: 25.7.2023

Plot:
Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a disgraced journalist, limited to investigate apparent miracles. One such miracle is the story of Alice (Cricket Brown) who used to be deaf until she was visited by the Virgin Mary and could suddenly hear. And that’s not the last miraculous thing to happen. Gerry starts to believe that there is actually something supernatural going on – he just isn’t sure whether it’s actually divine, or something bad.

The Unholy is snack cinema, satisfying while it lasts but not really a filling meal. While I love snacking, The Unholy does have the right ingredients to be a little more than that – it just fails to use them. And that makes it a little disappointing.

The Unholy is the kind of film that you watch only to be barely able to remember having watched it already a couple of days later. The thing is, though, that there would have been enough here to make it a really memorable film. Maybe all of that interesting stuff is buried in the novel and failed to make the jump to the screen (I haven’t read it, I can’t say), leaving tantalizing traces of it behind.

It’s not just the story and the characters that feels strangely stunted. The cinematography, too, isn’t bad at all. In fact, it might be the best thing about the film in its entirety. But it, too, just doesn’t get that much traction to really stick around in your head.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan sticks around, but that’s mostly because he’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The role itself is not only a little clichéd, but also flat, especially for a leading role. It would have needed more than just Morgan’s charisma and skill to really be better than the rest of the film.

That being said, I have seen way worse films than The Unholy, and it was engaging enough as I watched it. If you never watch it, you won’t be missing much, but if you’re in the mood for a bit of religious horror that doesn’t ask anything of you as a viewer, you could make way worse choices than grabbing this snack off the shelf.

Summarizing: fine, but not much more.