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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nSome time back I wrote about how Oscar season got pushed back a few months, which was why we were getting movies like \u201cNomadland\u201d and \u201cJudas and the Black Messiah\u201d in February. Now with \u201cThe Unholy,\u201d it\u2019s like January has come to April. January is typically the time of year when studios like to dump their lousy horror movies that couldn\u2019t compete on Halloween. The film actually opened last Friday, Good Friday, no doubt intentionally so the marketing team could blasphemously brag that it was opening \u201con the holiest day of the year.\u201d The idea was to cause controversy, but nobody cared about this movie enough to fight over it one way or the other. If anything the campaign backfired, because made it seem like the film was outdated by the time I saw it the very next day, and of course it\u2019s a really lame duck now. But nothing wanted to open this weekend in the shadow of \u201cGodzilla vs. Kong,\u201d so I have to settle for reviewing last weekend\u2019s #2 movie that has already fallen to #3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeffrey Dean Morgan stars as Gerry Fenn, a disgraced reporter looking for a comeback. A story about cattle mutilation in rural Massachusetts proves fruitless, but he thinks he can salvage his career with a story about a bogus miracle involving a creepy tree and a creepier doll. He stays in town long enough to get in a car accident and witness an \u201cactual miracle,\u201d where deaf teenager Alice (Cricket Brown) is suddenly able to hear, speak and even sing. She becomes a faith healer, helping a deaf child walk for the first time and curing her priest uncle (William Sadler) of his emphysema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People flock to Alice, especially when she interacts with the tree \u2013 her line of communication with \u201cMary,\u201d presumably the Virgin. And because Gerry was there at the beginning of her interactions, Alice grants him exclusive interview privileges. Sure, he has to contend with an annoying local bishop (Cary Elwes \u2013 his accent unmistakably locked on \u201cBoston gangster\u201d) and a Vatican-sanctioned miracle-disprover (Diogo Morgado), but for once he believes in the subject of his story. Or at least, he\u2019s sure of the miraculous things he\u2019s seen. The circumstances may not be as pure as the Virgin Mary suddenly bestowing blessings on this small town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eh, it\u2019s no secret that this is a horror movie, so why play coy? There\u2019s a malevolent creature at work named Mary, whose scheme is to get people to pledge their souls to what they think is the Virgin Mary, but is actually her. It\u2019s a plan I could see working (assuming that soul-pledging actually works that way), but she sabotages her own plan by letting Gerry and the priest know that something evil is afoot. She just has to keep popping up in nightmares and jump scares to make them suspicious. Rarely do these scares accomplish anything besides filling the quota for an uninteresting horror movie. Plus Mary has inconsistent lore and powers, meaning that we never know what equals danger and death with her. Despite the film\u2019s title making her sound more consistent, the way this villain is written is quite hole-y indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morgan and Brown turn in better performances than the material deserves, and it\u2019s fun to root against the obviously-exploitative Elwes character. But \u201cThe Unholy\u201d is too obsessed with the short-term goal of scaring audiences with pointless startles and laughable special effects rather than pulling off anything memorable. The movie wants to outrage people of faith, but it\u2019s not worth an emotion as strong as outrage. And even if you\u2019re not a person of faith, this movie isn\u2019t worth your time or money. Try to see some leftover Oscar season stuff instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Unholy\u201d is rated PG-13 for violent content, terror, and some strong language. Its running time is 99 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver Some time back I wrote about how Oscar season got pushed back a few months, which was why we were getting movies like \u201cNomadland\u201d and \u201cJudas… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}