PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Evan Spiliotopoulos, director and writer of the film The Unholy.
“The Unholy is a cautionary tale for the blindly faithful. The film’s fundamental theme is beware of false prophets”: this is how Evan Spiliotopoulos describes the heart of his supernatural thriller The Unholy, a film starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan that mixes with the journalism genre as well. Morgan plays a once famous journalist who finds himself in the middle of a series of miracles happening in a small farming community. Evan Spiliotopoulos unveils one of the main subtexts of the film: the supernatural threat is a metaphor of very real social and political damage that can be done by intentionally false narratives in the media. The director comments on the power of believing which can lead to very good or very bad things. The film is based on the book Shrine that Spiliotopoulos read when he was a teenager and the director reveal that the style of the film is his personal love letter to italian film director Mario Bava.
The Unholy : The Unholy 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 much more sinister. The Unholy is 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.
Alice Rohrwacher has been appointed President of the Caméra d’or Jury at Cannes 2025. Known for her poetic and visionary cinema, Rohrwacher will award the best first feature at the festival’s closing ceremony on May 24.