The Unholy

Unholy

Know who you pray with….

An Horror film to set your soul on fire The Unholy, which follows Alice, a young hearing-impaired girl who, after a supposed visitation from the Virgin Mary, is inexplicably able to hear, speak and heal the sick. As word spreads and people from near and far flock to witness her miracles, a disgraced journalist (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hoping to revive his career visits the small New England town to investigate. When terrifying events begin to happen all around, he starts to question if these phenomena are the works of the Virgin Mary or something more sinister. The Unholy is a 2021 American supernatural horror film produced by Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Evan Spiliotopoulos, written for the screen and directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos, and is based upon James Herbert’s best-selling book Shrine. 

The Movie plot

The film opens with the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft in 1845 in Banfield, Massachusetts. Before she dies, however, her spirit is bound to the body of a doll.

Many years later, skeptical journalist Gerry Fenn works a job reporting on the strange and unusual. His latest assignment takes him to Boston, where the purported strange activity is revealed to be a teenage prank. As he’s preparing to leave he discovers the doll shown earlier in the movie and purposely crushes it, accidentally setting the woman’s spirit free. Gerry later gets into an accident as he’s driving away after seeing a young girl, Alice, run across the road. He follows her to a tree, the site where he found the doll, and hears her speak before collapsing. When he takes her to a hospital later he learns that Alice is a deaf-mute and couldn’t have spoken. Gerry decides to stay in town to investigate what he thinks could be a real story rather than a hoax or prank.

The following day Alice stuns the community by speaking and proclaiming that she has been cured by the Virgin Mary. This launches a media furor that is further propelled by other seemingly miraculous healings. The Catholic Church sends Monsignor Delgarde to investigate the claims, assisted by Bishop Gyles. Gerry befriends Alice, during which time he learns that while she has been speaking to a being named Mary, the girl has only assumed that this is the religious figure. Beginning to suspect that something sinister is occurring due to visions of “Mary” as a horrific entity, Gerry finds a partner in Father Hagan, who was healed by Alice but also suspects the healings’ true nature. Father Hagan discovers papers detailing the death of Mary Elnor, the woman from the prologue. Mary sold her soul to Satan in order to gain eternal life and power. He would allow her and her descendants, revealed to be Alice, to perform “miracles” so people would pledge themselves to her and in turn, Satan. To the horror of Gerry and Father Hagan, they learn that Alice, who they believe is unaware of Mary’s true nature, wishes to hold a service by the tree and broadcast it to the masses. An attempt by Father Hagan to stop this from happening is unsuccessful and results in Mary attacking and hanging him in the church.

Once the service begins Alice urges everyone to pledge themselves to Mary three times. Gerry manages to stop the crowd from fully pledging. Along with a physician who treated Alice earlier in the film, Gerry reveals that none of the miracles are real, as they were all a result of the placebo effect. This causes Mary to angrily appear and kill Bishop Gyles before trying to kill Gerry. She is stopped by Alice, who sacrifices herself to save his life. This in turn causes Mary to disappear, as Alice was her link to the living world. Struck by her sacrifice, Gerry begs God to save Alice’s life. She comes back to life, but is once again a deaf-mute. In the epilogue, the statue of Mary inside the Church where Alice was seen praying before during the beginning of the movie cries tears of blood once again. This hints that Mary Elnor might have survived and she was in fact the one who healed Alice. If this is the case, this hints that Mary Elnor might come back once again to earth if Alice continues her bloodline.