The Unholy

The "disgraced journalist seeking redemption" is a trope so dusty it practically deserves its own wing in the Smithsonian. Usually, it involves a guy in a rumpled suit drinking cheap whiskey and chasing a lead that everyone else thinks is crazy. In The Unholy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan steps into those well-worn shoes as Gerry Fenn, a man who has fallen so far from grace he’s literally manufacturing "crop circles" in New England cow pastures for a quick paycheck. It’s a setup that feels comfortably familiar, like a warm blanket made of tropes and Catholic guilt, which is exactly the vibe this 2021 supernatural thriller leans into.

I watched this on a rainy Tuesday while nursing a slightly cold cup of peppermint tea, and honestly, the gloom outside my window was the perfect companion for the film's grey, overcast New England palette.

The Influencer of God

The meat of the story begins when Fenn stumbles upon Alice (Cricket Brown), a young hearing-impaired girl who suddenly begins to speak, hear, and—most importantly for the plot—heal the terminal. She claims the Virgin Mary is speaking through her. Soon, the tiny town of Banfield is the epicenter of a media circus. This is where the film feels most "contemporary." It doesn't just treat the miracles as a local oddity; it acknowledges how the modern world consumes the divine. Alice becomes a viral sensation, a "Jesus-Influencer" for the TikTok age, and the Catholic Church, represented by a deliciously smarmy Cary Elwes as Bishop Gyles, is all too eager to monetize the momentum.

Cricket Brown is the absolute standout here. As a newcomer, she has to carry the heavy lifting of making Alice feel both genuinely angelic and deeply unnerving. When she’s standing in the middle of a field, arms outstretched, there’s a vulnerability that makes you want to believe her, even as the score by Joseph Bishara (the man behind the screeching violins of The Conjuring) screams at you that something is very, very wrong.

Practical Dread vs. Digital Dust

Produced by Sam Raimi, you expect a certain level of "spook-a-blast" energy. You want the camera to zoom into a screaming mouth or have a tree branch reach out with malicious intent. For the first hour, The Unholy actually delivers a decent amount of atmospheric tension. There’s a scene involving a "Kern Baby"—a creepy folk-art doll made of husks—that is genuinely unsettling. It’s rooted in that specific brand of religious horror where the sacred is twisted into the profane.

However, once the film decides to fully reveal its monster, things get a bit wobbly. The entity, which I’ll call "The Lady in Chains," is a striking design on paper, but the CGI Mary looks like she crawled out of a PlayStation 3 cinematic. It’s a classic modern horror pitfall: the more we see the creature, the less scary it becomes. The film is at its best when it’s suggesting shadows in the corner of a confessional booth, rather than having a digital specter lunge across a stage in broad daylight. I found myself wishing they’d leaned harder into the practical effects expertise Raimi is known for, rather than relying on a render farm to do the scaring.

A Modern Relic of the Pandemic Era

Context is everything. The Unholy arrived in April 2021, a time when theaters were just beginning to breathe again after the long COVID-19 slumber. In that moment, it was exactly what we needed: a mid-budget, stand-alone horror movie that didn't require 14 sequels of homework. It feels like a throwback to the Screen Gems horror boom of the mid-2000s, yet it engages with our current obsession with "fake news" and the manipulation of truth.

Interestingly, the film is based on the 1983 novel Shrine by James Herbert. While the book was a product of the "Satanic Panic" era, director Evan Spiliotopoulos updates the subtext to fit our era of disinformation. Fenn isn't just a skeptic; he’s a guy who literally used to lie for a living, which makes him the perfect protagonist to debunk a supernatural hoax. The irony isn’t lost on me that the man who manufactured fake stories is the only one who can see the "true" lie being told by a demonic entity. It’s basically 'The Newsroom' if Aaron Sorkin was obsessed with Catholic exorcisms.

The Unholy doesn't reinvent the holy water, but it’s a perfectly functional delivery system for Catholic-themed spooks. While it suffers from some lackluster CGI in the final act and a few jump scares that feel more like "loud noise" than "earned fear," it’s elevated by a tired, charismatic performance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It’s the kind of movie that finds its second life on streaming services at 11:00 PM on a Friday night—not a masterpiece, but a solid enough way to spend 99 minutes questioning your Sunday School lessons.

If you’re looking for a film that explores the intersection of faith and fame with a side of screeching ghosts, this is a decent bet. Just don't expect it to convert you to the genre.