The Unholy begins with a short prologue from the 1800's which shows what appears to be the torture and killing of a woman for I'm guessing, witchcraft. We then transition to present day where we meet Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan who most people know as either Negan from The Walking Dead or John Winchester from Supernatural), a disgraced journalist. Gerry finds a doll inside the rotting stump of an old tree. He then smashes the doll which releases the spirit of the woman we saw in the opening. Later that night he meets a girl named Alice (Cricket Brown who has also appeared in Dukeland and various shorts) when he almost runs her over in the road. He finds her standing under the same tree where the doll was found and she collapses. Gerry is told she is a deaf mute but Gerry swears he heard her talking just before she collapsed. Gerry decides to stay in the small New England town in order to investigate what seems to be a miracle.
Also starring is William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, and Iron Man 3) as Father Hagan, the towns priest, Katie Anselton (Creep and She Dies Tomorrow) as Natalie the town's doctor, and Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride and Saw) as Bishop Gyles who is sent to the town by the Catholic church to investigate these miracles. Gerry and Hagan (who is also Alice's uncle) believe these powers may not be a divine gift but from a more sinister source. The Unholy was written and directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos (who also wrote The Pope's Exorcism and The Huntsman: Winter's War) in his directorial debut. The Unholy is based on the horror novel Shrine written by James Herbert who also wrote The Rats and The Fog. While making the film, production was shut down due to the pandemic pushing completion of the film back.
Mostly I wanted to see this because it starred JDM and I found him to be his usual entertaining self even if he does seem to be subdued here a bit. He has to be though because otherwise he would just be playing Negan in a horror movie, and that's a fine line he needs to dance along. Sadler is also decent as Father Hagan although it feels a little like a miscast as I'm used to seeing him as one of the tough guys but here he plays a sickly priest. Aside from JDM, the star here is the sets and the scenery. Scenes are nicely framed and while the color palate is muted (pardon the pun) it's never drab or washed out. It's New England in the winter time, not the best time to see anything outside that far north. The CGI is a bit clunky with the ghost scenes and it's not long before the film turns into a jump scare fest with more of them missing than landing. The story is a good one though and the films positives serve as equalizer to the bad. With all that being said though, and for me at least, this still struggles to get into that "good" film range. Maybe it was the pandemic interruption that cause a disconnect, maybe it's trying to do a horror movie under the PG-13 standards that handcuffed it I'm not sure but I'll give this two and a half creepy old trees out of five.
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