In the small town of Banfield a deaf-mute woman is visited by the Virgin Mary and is suddenly able to speak and hear. Imbued with the power to heal others a miracle is declared and people flock to pray to her. But is this power from the divine or from an altogether different source? 

The Unholy opens fairly promisingly. Disgraced journalist Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is taking hack jobs for small pay. Asked to cover a cow mutilation that turns out to be a teenage prank he seeks to embellish the story to ensure a pay day. Destroying a doll found in a dead oak tree in the church grounds he plans to spin a yarn to keep the story alive. What he did not bank on was this unleashing a power that calls to Alice (Cricket Brown) healing her and asking her to spread the word. 

As priests and the media descend upon the town the fervour around the miracle increases. But Fenn is not entirely convinced of Mary’s motives and keeps digging into the history of Banfield to uncover a dark secret. 

Ultimately the film really falls apart in the final third. There are moments when it falls on so many horror film tropes it actually almost became laughable to me. Exorcisms and the creepy movements that originated in Japanese horror films are laid on thick and by the time we get to some incredibly poor cgi fire the film had lost me. 

One thing is for sure though, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has the kind of charisma that would make him reading a phone book interesting.