My second post-lockdown trip to the cinema was to see The Unholy, the Sam Raimi produced movie based on James Herbert’s 1983 novel, Shrine.
I happened to pick this book up in a charity store few years back, but hadn’t got around to reading it, but I thought I’d check it out before the movie came out, curious about how they’d go about adapting a 400+ page book to a movie with a run-time of under 100 minutes (which is pretty much where your standard horror film should be).
In the end, the movie in neither an unholy mess nor a shrine to be worshipped at, but there are certainly lots of things to be learned about how to do an adaptation of a long book to a short film.
Here, the story is parred down to the essential parts, and many characters are cut alongside their story arcs. This is 100% the right choice. You see lots of adaptations where too much respect is given to the source material and they try to cram in everything which often only leaves them weakly presented and a disappointment anyway. It’s better to leave out any element that you can’t properly present.
The action is shifted to the USA. It would have worked in its natural UK or the USA, to be honest. The history in the book goes back to before there were even Christians in the USA, but it really doesn’t matter. Given that the story has been brought forward in time to modern day rather than 1983, it probably works better in the USA. It feels more likely that this kind of fascination with the miracle would work there. There seems to be more religious faith in the USA right now, that’s what I guess I’m saying.
There are some key changes to characters. Gerry Fenn becomes a much older man, and to be honest, I’m there for a washed out and cynical Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I felt a character with a history was a better fit here than a younger cynic. Similarly, making Alice older worked. In the book, she has little voice with decisions made for her. There’s some incredibly creepy stuff in the book, but I just don’t think you could work it on screen in a film’s duration. An older Alice allows her to have a voice, and we’re much closer to the antagonist too.
The key part is that the novel has this fantastic creeping dread. We start to see corruption and we see more and more people drawn to the area, and there’s always an idea that there’s something more going on, but it’s a while before the presence of evil is revealed. In the movie, the creature that frequently appears does a decent job of bringing a few scares in.
The biggest change, perhaps, is the ending, and I have to say, I probably prefer the film’s ending to the books. With the smaller cast of characters it felt tighter, except for one aspect that I won’t spoil. In the book it was reliant on a minor character who I think we may have needed to see a little more of. There’s probably more of him cut away on some editor’s floor somewhere.
The film misses some of the book’s best set pieces–the car crash and subsequent escape from the fire would be marvellous on the big screen, but I can also understand the need to trim it to keep the story to its core.
Most of the cast do a decent job, but Cary Elwes is bloody awful He goes full Boston. Never go full Boston.
So for what it is, it’s relatively well done. It’s an entertaining but unoriginal way to spend almost 100 minutes. The only way to do the book (which wins, obviously) justice would be as a mini-series. That way you can flesh out all of the minor characters. You can show the corruption spreading through Banefield. You can have all of the marvellous set-pieces alongside this creeping dread. You can uncover the mystery slowly… but for God’s sake finish it after one series.