“The Unholy” good-looking and full of creepy ideas but far too clunky to frighten

The Unholy (2021)

Religious horror films often have a tough time not paling next to William Friedkin’s stunningly effective “The Exorcist,” which is now nearly 50 years old. The recent “Saint Maud” confidently held its own, while “The Unholy” can’t really attest to that. This adaptation of the 1983 book “Shrine” by James Herbert isn’t completely damned, as screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos (2017’s “Beauty and the Beast”) makes his directing debut under Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures production label. Ideas of blind faith could have led to something creepy and transgressive, or this could have just winded up being spooky fun. “The Unholy” ends up somewhere in the middle with all the requisite jump scares one might expect. 

The film’s prologue is at least arresting, being shot from the POV of a woman named Mary in 1845 New England. Looking through an iron mask, she is terrified by the surrounding men who hammer the mask to her face, set her on fire, and then hang her to an oak tree. Her soul ends up being trapped in a kern doll buried within the hollow of the dead tree near a Catholic church, pastored by Father Hagan (William Sadler), in the small town of Banfield, Massachusetts. Almost 200 years later, hard-drinking Boston journalist Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who’s been disgraced for fabricating so many stories, ends up finding and breaking that doll near the old oak tree. Later that night, Fenn nearly runs over Father Hagan’s deaf teenage niece Alice (Cricket Brown), who’s crossing the street and makes her way to the tree to kneel. Fenn swears he hears the girl praying, but Alice has been deaf since she was born. In the morning, Alice has been blessed to miraculously speak again and does so in front of the congregation after having a vision of the Virgin Mary. Fenn wastes no time jumping on the story to relive his glory days of reporting. But as Alice believes herself to be the descendant of “Mary” sent to carry out the Lady’s work, those closest to her will meet their maker as soon as they discover the healings to be more satanic than divine. 

Mood-focused and never less than handsome in style, “The Unholy” looks unusually good even for a PG-13 horror movie tossed into theaters during Easter weekend. Besides the pre-credits opening, the film gets off to a promising start in setting up Gerry Fenn’s history. It helps that Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who last battled a dybbuk in 2012’s “The Possession,” another Raimi-produced creepshow) is so well-cast and convincingly navigates Fenn’s arc as a charming if morally unjust drunk who will be truly changed by these theological happenings. In a film full of terribly overacting extras, the supporting cast actually does its best to bring conviction to this story as well. William Sadler always brings color and interest, even here as the pastor with Emphysema from his smoking habits, and Katie Aselton is fine if given little else to play besides being Fenn’s “tour guide” and potential love interest as local doctor Natalie Gates. Meanwhile, Cary Elwes is clearly unscrupulous with his thick-as-chowda Boston accent as the Boston archbishop who looks into the Vatican-approved authenticity of Alice’s miracle-working. The real standout, though, is newcomer Cricket Brown as Alice. There is such an angelic innocence to her that to see Alice be corrupted by evil is almost heartbreaking. 

“The Unholy” is good-looking, despite some fiery visual effects that have an unfinished feel, but it sure could have used more restraint. Banfield may be a small town devoted to Christianity, but Alice imploring the entire town—and convincing others from far and wide—to believe that she can heal is an idea that goes from zero to sixty. The jump scares, which aren’t anything we haven’t seen before, are occasionally effective in making sure we're awake. But everything grows so overwrought with so many familiar, desperate, emphatically scored ploys to frighten that prove futile. Pretty early on, the so-called “Lady” doesn’t so much pose a threat of doom as she does become a cause for giggles, being visualized in a nightmare as a hooded, spindly-fingered, altogether CG-heavy ghoul out of “The Ring.” At nearly every turn, Spiliopoulos has his ghoulish specter shrieking and hugging the camera, rendering her a generic monster that later recalls the Tooth Fairy from 2003's "Darkness Falls," and not in a good way. “The Unholy” is more involving than a sermon during Sunday mass, but the clunky, eye-rolling moments far outweigh the creepy ones.

Grade: C

Screen Gems is releasing “The Unholy” (109 min.) in theaters on April 2, 2021.