The Unholy

 3.5/4

Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Cricket Brown, Katie Aselton, William Sadler, Cary Elwes, Diogo Morgado

Rated PG-13 for Violent Content, Terror and Some Strong Language

I was not enthusiastic about this movie.  It looked to be a rip-off of "The Conjuring" like "The Curse of La Llorona," where some blithering idiot does something stupid and invites the wrath of some cheesy special effect said to be possessed by Satan or something.  Call it a lack of faith?

Pardon the pun.  The truth is that "The Unholy" greatly surprised me.  It took a bit to overcome my bias, but this movie genuinely intrigued me.  It's not just a special effects picture (although there are some of those) filled with jump shocks (those are here too) and a creaky, rotting, entity (it does have that as well).  The movie takes time to develop its characters and take a sociological look at something that seems miraculous but is actually malevolent.

Gerry Fenn (Morgan) was once a respected journalist who lost his career after having been caught fabricating his stories.  Now he's taken to writing cheap special interest stories and drinking.  While pursuing one of these stories in a cozy New England town, he uncovers something much more interesting: a previously deaf-mute girl named Alice (Brown) has suddenly been blessed with the ability to speak and hear.  She claims that the Virgin Mary heard her prayers and blessed her.  And after she heals a boy's muscular dystrophy, she is hailed as a giver of miracles.  Now she and her little town are the subject of a worldwide phenomena, and Gerry has the inside scoop.  But what no one knows is that this is all a lie.  It's the work of a demon, putting the world in danger.

"The Unholy" could have been a by-the-numbers demonic possession movie, but Evan Spiliotopoulos, working from a book by a renowned horror writer, the late James Herbert, is too ambitious.  He takes his time to explore how a situation like this can shape the world.  Everyone, from Gerry to the local priest Father Hagan (Sadler), to the Bishop in Boston (Elwes), has an angle on it.  The world turns into Alice mania.  Some, like Father Hagan, want to protect her.  The media wants to exploit her.  And Gerry sees her as a ticket back to respectability.  Spiliotopoulos also explores what it means for faith.  Bishop Gyles, for example, is skeptical (even as a man of the cloth), until he figures out how he can use Alice.

It's obvious that Alice is demonically possessed early on, and that's not a mistake.  One would think that, in a movie like this, giving away such a key bit of information would deflate the film's tension.  In reality, it enhances it.  We know that Alice is dangerous and watching the world be taken in by her alleged miracles leads to a substantial amount of dread and menace.  What is kept hidden from the viewer is who is possessing Alice and what that means.

The lack of known names in the cast doesn't mean the acting isn't strong.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan has no problem playing a cynic who seeks to use this "miracle" to his advantage.  Gerry is selfish but smart, and that makes him interesting.  Twenty years ago this role could have been played by Harrison Ford.  Cricket Brown doesn't have a lot of range, but she is cute and likable.  Katie Aselton is in fine form as a woman who respects God and science in equal measure.

Although "The Unholy" is more than a scare fest, it delivers on the goods.  Spiliotopoulos is able to generate several effective jolts to the audience, and they are satisfying because they aren't cheap or obligatory.  They're creative and surprising.  And the creature is genuinely unnerving.  What the film lacks is a sense of menace.  Perhaps because he was making something more than a traditional horror movie, Spiliotopoulos doesn't create a visual sense of dread until the latter half when he begins to show his cards.

I admit to halfway hoping that this would a painless waste of time to join "Leap" on my Bottom 10 list at the end of the year.  It turned out to be the opposite.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie.  There's nothing unholy about this movie.

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