Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Katie Aselton in “The Unholy” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)
Please consider VOD and/or Drive-In options and, if you go to the theater, please be safe.Cary Elwes, Christine Adams, Cricket Brown, Danny Corbo, Diogo Morgado, Dustin Tucker, Gisela Chipe, horror, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Katie Aselton, movies, reviews, Sonny Corbo, The Unholy, William Sadlerīy Carla Hay Cricket Brown in “The Unholy” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)Ĭulture Representation: Taking place primarily in the fictional town of Banfield, Massachusetts, the horror film “The Unholy” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Hispanic people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.Ĭulture Clash: A disgraced journalist discovers what appears to be a “miracle” teenager, who became cured of blindness and muteness, and seems to have the ability to heal others through the power of the Virgin Mary, but things take a sinister turn when people in the town start dying.Ĭulture Audience: “The Unholy” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching predictable horror movies that have plot holes and aren’t very scary. That said, for his directorial feature debut, Spiliotopoulos does show potential and, with more focus on crafting his directorial skills, I think he could surprise us all in the future.ĭisclaimer/Editor’s Note: Nightmarish Conjurings doesn’t endorse seeing movies in theaters at this time due to the pandemic. Ultimately, I would have liked to have seen it pushed more to the edge and fleshed out more so that we could really see what the film was capable of offering. Overall, THE UNHOLY is a predictable, unmemorable possession film that doesn’t do much in terms of getting the audience to care about what’s happening. Instead, the film itself just feels safe.
Also, for a film produced by Sam Raimi, who’s produced such films as Crawl, Don’t Breathe, 2013’s Evil Dead, and more, you would think the film would pack a bit more of a punch.
The movie unholy plus#
This is unfortunate because it left me disinterested in the majority of the characters, plus you never really feel like they’re in any type of danger. The issue with that is we, as the viewer, are only left with a pretty picture and not a whole lot of character depth. Visually, it’s a beautiful film to look at and Spiliotopoulos is, at times, able to conjure up a cold, sinister atmosphere. Where I think the film stumbles the most is in the way it executes the story. I’m a person that gets very uncomfortable when someone is able to move their body in an unnatural way, so you can only imagine my horror when Mazepa’s contortionist skills come into play, especially during a scene in which we see her climbing out of a pool of water. That said, contortionist Marina Mazepa, who tackles both the vision of Mary and the demonic entity, is fantastic. In terms of scares, THE UNHOLY features your run-of-the-mill jump scares. While Jeffrey Dean Morgan fails to bring much of anything to the film, and if I’m being honest it felt like he was phoning it in most times, Brown made sure to steer the ship while also holding the viewer’s attention. A theater actor performing in her feature film, she steals the limelight with her performance and exudes the soft, sinless young woman audiences come to associate with these types of movies. The highlight of the film definitely falls upon the shoulders of newcomer, Cricket Brown. No one is expecting The Exorcist here, but you at least want the audience to feel a semblance of nervous excitement over what they are viewing. Watching this film as a fan of possession movies was an experience because, as much as enjoyed the production design and the cast, the story ultimately suffered from being incredibly bland, something no one wants to experience during a horror film. When he breaks the talisman, he unleashes a supernatural force…but is it a miraculous phenomenon or something more sinister? In THE UNHOLY, a disgraced journalist (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) visits a small New England town where he happens upon a porcelain “kern baby,” a protective doll used by farmers in days of old. Unfortunately, for this critic, the answer is no.
Dabbling in the subgenre of possession films, you might be wondering if THE UNHOLY brings anything new to the table. Releasing just in time for the holiest of the Christian holidays, Director Evan Spiliotopoulos’s supernatural horror film, THE UNHOLY, based on James Herbert’s novel Shrine, has arrived.
0 kommentar(er)
