The Unholy is a horror movie that came out in April 2021. The film is about a deaf and non-verbal teenage girl named Alice who was raised in the church, but one day she believes she sees the Virgin Mary, and she believes the Virgin Mary has healed her disability. She also believes she is now able to heal other disabled people. She eventually realizes it’s not the Virgin Mary and instead something much darker that gave her the ability to heal.
You can probably see the toxic theme that's going on here—the movie is all about healing (and trying to fix) disabilities. Yet few sources have pointed this out since the movie came out. Most reviews are about how scary the film is or how many visual effects were used. This just shows how the toxic idea of needing to fix disabilities is completely normalized in our society. Let's take a look at exactly how The Unholy is based on this idea.
6 There Weren’t Any Disabled Actors Or Filmmakers Involved With Making ‘The Unholy’
Although The Unholy is pretty scary, what’s even scarier is the toxic representation. Bad representation does more damage than no representation and leads people to believe harmful stereotypes. There weren’t any disabled actors or filmmakers involved in making the movie (at least in major roles) which is one of the main reasons why the representation is toxic and not accurate. Cricket Brown, who plays Alice, told Scream Horror Magazine, “The scene where I hear and speak for the first time was definitely the scene that I was most worried about and had the most fear about in terms of playing it truthfully… I watched a lot of things and stuck mainly to YouTube as there’s a wealth of information on these communities of people with different abilities online.” Since Cricket isn’t deaf, she had to watch YouTube videos to portray her character. It would be a lot more accurate if a deaf actress played Alice.
5 Alice Only Talks About Her Deafness Negatively
After Alice is “healed,” she starts talking about all of the bad things that came with being deaf. She doesn’t focus on any of the positive things she’s always had in her life. She only talks about her deafness negatively and makes it seem like it’s the worst thing in the world to be disabled. When Gerry, a struggling journalist, is asking Alice about being “healed,” she is blasting music and dancing to it. She tells him, “You know the worst part about being deaf? You can’t listen to music.” After she says that, she also talks about how she used to be invisible and no one noticed her until now. Not once did she say anything positive about her disability.
4 Alice Tries To Show That Her Life Is “Better” Without Her Disability
Just like Alice only talks about her disability negatively, she makes it seem like she needed to be “healed” to be happy and that her life is so much better without her disability. During one scene of The Unholy, Alice is singing in the church and says she wasn’t able to do that before because the choir wouldn’t let her join. This wasn’t because of her deafness. There are many deaf musicians and singers. She could have joined the choir if they had given her a chance. Her disability wasn’t the true reason why she was unhappy—it was the way people treated her because of it.
3 Dr. Natalie Gates Talks About A Boy “Suffering” From His Disability
Besides Alice, there is another character in the film who has a disability named Toby (who is also played by an able-bodied actor). He has a form of muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair. Toby goes to see Alice after he hears what happened to her and she “heals” him. He gets out of his wheelchair and is able to walk. Later on in the movie, Pastor Delgarde talks to Dr. Natalie Gates to determine if what happened was a miracle. She explains how he appears to have gained back all of the muscle that he lost and is no longer “suffering” from muscular dystrophy. The problem with saying "suffering" is that it makes it seem like you can’t live a happy life if you’re disabled, which is far from true.
2 The Church Tries To Hide Mental Illness
If you haven’t watched the movie yet, this might spoil some of it for you. Towards the middle of the movie, Father Hagan (who is Alice’s guardian) is killed by the dark entity that is present throughout the film. But nobody knows he was killed until later on in the movie. Everyone thinks he died by suicide. When Gerry finds Father Hagan, Bishop Gyles asks him to keep quiet about how he died. He doesn’t want anyone to think he died by suicide. He tries to paint this picture that everyone affiliated with the church is “perfect” and doesn’t want anyone to think Father Hagan might have had a mental illness that caused his death. Mental illness is a disability, so the bishop was pretty much trying to separate disability from the church, just like how the choir didn’t let Alice join because of her disability. Not every church is like this, but portraying churches like this in a film can cause a lot of harm.
1 The Whole Film Is Based On The Idea That Disability Is Something That Should Be Fixed Or Healed
All of these are just a few examples of how The Unholy portrays disability negatively and as something that needs to be fixed. The whole movie is based on the idea that anyone who’s disabled should be healed to live a happy life. The dark entity “healing” people is what drives the story. If the characters didn’t wish to be healed, there wouldn’t be a movie. They could have created a different scary movie about something else, but they chose to do a story that’s toxic. It makes disabled people think there’s something wrong with them or that they can’t live a happy life. And it makes other people see them differently. Until disabled filmmakers are able to tell their stories, toxic movies like this are going to keep happening.
