The Unholy Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Unholy Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 22, 2021

Oh, great. It’s another one of these. Writer/Director Evan Spiliotopoulos’ (writer, The Huntsman: Winter's War and Charlie's Angels) The Unholy follows in a tiresomely long line of likeminded contemporary Horror -- the term here used very loosely -- otherwise known as films which are of a religious bend, are awash in religious symbolism, which feature supposedly eerie sounds and floaty voices, and depict possessed people and/or demons walking and crawling in inhuman postures. It's mindlessly repetitive drivel but the film is technically proficient and good looking, save for the still unconvincing digital effects.

Rise up.

Investigate Journalist Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)'s latest assignment in Boston has born no fruit, but when he finds a crushes a doll buried within an old tree, he lets loose a cursed spirit. The spirit allows a local deaf-mute girl, Alice (Cricket Brown), to speak and hear. That's music to Gerry's ears: it's a potential story with some teeth. Alice quickly becomes a central figure in her small town and the miracle in her life leads to more: she pronounces a young wheelchair-bound boy healed and he indeed stands up and walks. But Gerry quickly begins to realize that the spirit with which Alice is communicating -- assumed to be the Virgin Mary -- is instead the satanic Mary Elnor, a young woman who was burned for her deal with the devil in 1845. Now, with danger lurking, the church seeking answers and keeping truths hidden, and Gerry on the verge of putting together the story that will define his career, a town teeters on edge as the supposed miracles might actually be soul-damning curses.

It's not so much that The Unholy is a bad film -- far from it, in fact; this is a technically impressive picture and in isolation the story isn't half bad -- but it's just so overdone. Audiences have seen this film time and again in countless iterations over the past decade-plus. The religiously centered Horror film is essentially a genre all to it own anymore, and the problem here is that The Unholy is so beholden to the well established tropes that it never finds its own voice or identity. Even as the essential story elements are more or less "new" or at least uniquely ordered here, the film presents in such a way as to simply feel like a regurgitation of other like films. It's not necessarily superior or inferior to any of them, and that may be its biggest problem: it's completely obscure and irrelevant right out of the gate. Perhaps hardcore genre fans will find some things to like here but chances are most in the audience are just going to absorb and move on once the credits roll. This is cinema its most forgettable in 2021.

But it must be said that the film does its superfluous stuff well, even if it doesn't necessarily translate into a good movie. The picture is roundly professional at the most fundamental level, offering well versed technical details and passable special effects (though the various inhuman movement effects continue to flounder in these sorts of genre films). The writing may not be original, but it's well capable of finding enough of a voice to keep the story moving in the right direction, building modest interest in the characters but only minimal tension in the story's meat.

The cast is fine if not largely unenthusiastic. Morgan does his best to drift away from his typical screen persona and mold his character into something of a sleazy flawed hero type who eventually comes to fight for the forces of light against Mary and the satanic darkness. Morgan is clearly not all-in with the project, seeming to recognize its flaws and shortcomings and just going with the flow rather than working hard to infuse his character with any sort of identifiable, lasting personality as he did Negan in The Walking Dead. Cricket Brown is a bit more involved in her character's growth and arc, and it's the more interesting one, anyway. Hers is a solid screen presence and she helps to sell her character's transformation, growth, and involvement in the story with surehanded finesse and grace.

The Unholy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

There's nothing devilish about The Unholy's 1080p transfer. It's just about perfect in every way. The digital source is clean and largely noise-free even in the most challenging of low-light shots. The image is effortlessly sharp throughout, revealing fine level clarity and intimate definition that is just about right for this sort of movie at 1080p. Facial definition is tack-sharp and perfectly revealing, leaving no hair or line or pore left undiscovered. Clothing definition is much the same, offering fine point detail to the finest fabric intricacies. Location textures come to life with excellent depth and clarity, whether church interiors, trees, and various other key locations and objects seen throughout the film. Color reproduction is terrific, too, featuring well saturated tones, excellent neutral contrast, and no lack of vivid output. Whites are crisp, blacks are deep and never crush out details, and skin tones appear accurate and healthy. There are no source flaws or encode blemishes to report. They don't come a whole lot better than this.

The Unholy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Unholy arrives on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The film opens with a horrific point of view hanging, beating, and burning in 1845. The crackling fire, the depth of the screams, and the scene's general intensity are sonically first-rate. As the film shifts to the present there is no loss of sonic excellence. Moments later the track folds in some typical Horror sounds like eerie whispers and so forth floating all around the listener at the 4:40 mark to wonderful effect. These sorts of genre sound cues are replete throughout the film and always play with consistently high levels of clarity and definition. The stage is fully engaged and the track often sounds bigger than its 5.1 constraints. With the exacting clarity in play as well as all of the Horror and action sound elements this track teeters on reference quality for spacing, movement, and detail alike. Music is wide and firm, focused up front but never shying away from making use of the surround channels for extra wrap and saturation. Dialogue is clear and steadily delivered from the front center channel. Atmospherics are perfectly intermixed into the track, too.

The Unholy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Beyond a handful of previews for other Sony titles, this Blu-ray release of The Unholy contains no supplemental content, which is a surprise because a featurette or two and several deleted scenes are all but certainties for this type of release, and maybe throw in a commentary, too. But there's nothing here. Sony has packed in a Movies Anywhere digital copy voucher but not a DVD copy. This release ships with a non-embossed slipcover. At time of writing there are no alternative packaging variants available.

The Unholy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Unholy doesn't really stir the spirit. Here's a film that's absolutely passable in isolation but within the larger sum of its genre feels so lifeless and stale. This is insipid moviemaking at its most readily identifiable today. It's technically well done and somewhat narratively engaging but lacks even a hint of self identity and certainly no purpose. Sony's Blu-ray is disappointingly featureless but the video and audio presentations are first rate. Worth a look.