Unholy
Martha, a widow living in rural Pennsylvania, comes home to find her daughter about to blow her own head off with a shotgun in the basement of their house. Martha doesn't succeed in stopping her child's horrific demise, but the girl's death gradually leads the grieving mother to investigate a conspiracy that involves a legendary local witch, Nazi dabbling with the occult, and secret government experiments, with the story even referencing the fabled Philadelphia Experiment
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- Cast:
- Adrienne Barbeau , Nicholas Brendon , Richard Ziman , Merwin Goldsmith , Susan Willis , Joseph McKenna , Alan Aisenberg
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Reviews
Excellent but underrated film
Absolutely Fantastic
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Well.... I have to admit that I am a huge fan of "Buffy" and because of that I did watch this movie because it's with Nicholas Brendon. I have to say, that I cannot say anything against his acting, because he is doing a great or even the best job of all the actors on this movie.Adrienne Barbeau, the main actress cannot ban the audience to the screen because her acting is beyond professional. She never gives you the feeling she is doing something for real and it may be the problem with the whole movie. As a main actor you have to carry the plot and if you suck, then the whole movie might do it as well.I have to admit that the plot also is not so exciting and the special effects lack of persuasion. Even shock effects are not there because e.g. when oh so scary graphics are flipped by the characters there is this sound effect which shall imply you that this should be scary but you are just like "Yeah, I got it... but there is nothing frightening at all...Can you skip to the next part already!" And there is one point when the actress just screams for Lucas all the time, which will clearly annoy you as much as it did annoy me.I think a horror movie is hard to create because you easily can stumble into a comedy. In this example it is neither. This movie lacks of excitement, a good plot and the genre specifics. Not worth the watch
An excellent and intriguing concept, detailed and appropriate production design, and very talented acting (except for the store owner, Richard Ziman, whose overacting was practically unbearable) are all marred by dreadful editing and cinematography, writing more terrifying than the story and direction bad enough to make you cry.Additionally, the depiction of a family who has just lost a daughter to suicide was offensively inaccurate. Granted, not every family's experience is the same. But there is a mourning period - a time of grief. Not once did they seem to wonder why she killed herself without thinking that she must have been forced into it. Not once did they consider that it was some sort of psychological dysfunction or emotional trauma that caused her to commit suicide... and come on, why did they say "suicide" about a billion times?! Do you really think that they would so quickly accept and deal with what she did and be able to call it "suicide" so casually? Many families can barely even utter the word so recently after the death of a love one.I initially found this movie because of Nicholas Brendon (yeah, Buffy fan, right here), and I wasn't disappointed by his performance in this movie. He was convincing at most moments, and the moments where he wasn't can be attributed to bad writing. I don't care if he's a dude, I don't care if he's a stoner, I don't care about any of that. His little sister died. Let the man cry a minute on camera before you dive head first into the mystery-solving.And lastly - I won't reveal the conclusion of the story, but I will say that it happened far too hastily and that it was poorly directed. It leaves you understanding generally what happened, but with a sense of "wait, they missed something" in addition to saying "that's IT?" As if they tried to come up with an interesting twist to the ending (which a movie of this sort sort of requires) and just... couldn't.It breaks my heart to see such a fascinating and well thought-out story come to an end like this, but a film is only as good as it's script, and "Unholy"'s script is... well, just that.
This sounded like a really interesting movie from the blurb. Nazis, occult , government conspiracies. I was expecting a low budget Nazi version of the DaVinci code or the Boys from Brazil or even Shockwaves. Instead you get something quite different, more psychological, more something like from David Lynch. That was actually a plus. But the way the story is told is just awful.Part of the trouble is the casting. Andrienne Barbeau's character starts off the moving being somewhat timid and afraid. She just doesn't do that well, even at her age, though she certainly tried. The actor cast as the son apparently thought this was a comedy. Most of the other actors also seemed to have thought this was a campy movie, or at least acted like it, rather than simply being quirky. The only one that I thought did really well was the daughter, Siri Baruc.Another big part is the pacing. It starts off very slowly. So slowly you might be tempted to turn it off. But then it gets compelling for a while when you get to the daughter's suicide and the aftermath. But shortly afterward, it all becomes a jumbled mess. Some of this was on purpose, but much of it was just needlessly confusing, monotonous, and poorly focused.The real problem, is it's simply not a pleasant movie to watch. It's slow, dull, none of the characters are likable. Overuse of imagery and sets. Some movies you see characters get tortured. In this, it's the viewer that does. It does have a few creepy moments, most notably the creepy Nazi paintings and the credits, but the rest of the movie is mostly just tiresome.
Some movies dream big on a small budget and this is one of them. The small budget allotted to it, doesn't do it's story justice. It's not that the movie was badly made, it's that it could have been so much better.First off; the performances. Other then the son, everyone did a pretty good job. The neighbor who had a fascination for tomatoes was pretty cool, and was a nice bit of comic relief.The story. A bit too far reaching for the budget allotted. Within minutes we find out about the Unholy Trinity conducted by the Nazis during the war: invisibility, mind control and time travel. Without giving anything further away, the movie involves characters finding out about mind control, invisibility and time travel. By the way, stay tuned for the credits, the story continues in radio addresses throughout the end credits.The SFX. Not bad, but I can see them being done on the directors home PC using everyday over the counter technology--not that it's a bad thing.Honestly the best part of the movie were the three painting that were shown. I loved the style they were done in.In closing all I have to say is: Damn Nazis!