Unholy Movie Review

I watched Unholy last night, which was a movie that I've been hearing a lot about throuhg reviews and finally got around to it. In my opinion, it wasn't that bad, though, I can see why people don't like it. I found the characters weren't well written, the story is kind of self-explanatory, and there isn't any real mystery to it. Again, I enjoyed it for things such as the special effects, dream sequences were well-executed, and anything that has demons I'm always intrigued by.

In the beginning, we see the witch get burned at the stake, which honestly had me a little sad. I don't think her actions of condemning all the townspeople to Hell solicited a slow death, maybe imprisonment or something faster. Her death leads us to her next form as an evil, vengeful spirit that she sold her soul to the devil to become. I mean, I think I would be pissed off, too, if I was the witch being burned at the stake. Also, I don't love how she only kind of partially possessed her human vessel, which they don't even give an explanation for, I would have just taken over completely. Her spirit gets bound to a tree by the townspeople and the spell that keeps her there is contained inside a corn baby.

Later on, the main character, Gerry, comes in. He's a reporter who came into the town from cases of cattle mutilations. I didn't like him though because he was a liar at his job, just to create false headlines in search of fame, but he ended up costing others their jobs since they didn't know they were helping him with false stories. The movie does add some karma to the plot as he tries to find something new to report on over the cattle mutilations. He finds the corn baby in the farm, and stupidly decides to break it, which then frees the witch's spirit.

In my opinion, the Gerry did not have any redeeming qualities. A few good deeds do not make up for a life of poor choices. Granted he learned his lesson, but still, I will never see that character as a hero in any way shape, or form. To me, he is just a character who is cleaning up his mess. I will say I did enjoy the secondary protagonist, Alice, because she was much more altruistic. And while she was possessed, she believed she was doing things on behalf of the Virgin Mary, so I kind of have the sympathy for that.

I think the only change I would make to this film is probably to set it in Puritan times when the idea of a which is more believable than in the modern times, but other than that this film is decent. The only people that I think would enjoy this film are people who don't care about production quality and don't care about profound character development mostly because they resolve everything pretty much right at the end. I also wish they would've just asked God to bring Alice's soul to heaven and leave the devil's bride in hell, but they didn't do that. So technically the spirit of the which is still around in that universe just severely weakened, but they might have done this in case they wanted to make part two. However, if they do make a second one, I hope they make a more compelling story. Have you seen this movie? If so, what are your thoughts?