Beneath the nation’s fascination with horror films — which translates into a multibillion-dollar industry — lurks a hidden quest for the divine, a theologian with expertise on the genre told OSV News.

Jessica Navin, spiritual formation coordinator for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), did not have a sainthood-cause documentary in mind when she began work as executive producer on what would become “Radiating Joy: The Michelle Duppong Story.”

Catholic viewers will naturally be interested in a TV show that features a nun as one of its principal characters. In the case of “Grotesquerie,” however, they’ll tune in, to use an obsolete term, only to be turned off — both by a welter of gore and by a treatment of the church that degenerates from mere ignorance to outright hostility.

Capsule reviews of theatrical movies available now for streaming or scheduled for broadcast on network or cable television as well as notes on TV programming for the same week.

There’s much to like and even admire in the animated biography “Piece by Piece” (Focus). Most significantly, as a Lego version of singer, songwriter and music producer Pharrell Williams explores his past via an extended interview with director and co-writer Morgan Neville, the film highlights its subject’s Christian faith.

A serious, even lugubrious, tone and a top-flight cast add heft to the ecclesiastical melodrama “Conclave” (Focus). Yet the film is fundamentally a power-struggle potboiler kept roiling by attention-grabbing plot developments — the last and most significant of which Catholic viewers will likely find uncomfortable at best.

As scripted by Mark Bomback, “White Bird” effectively tugs at the heart by showcasing altruistic heroism in the face of dire evil.

The upshot is a long, grim, ultimately unrewarding slog made suitable for few — more by its gritty atmosphere than by an accumulation of objectionable ingredients.

The insensate botch of “Megalopolis” (Lionsgate) is structured like a fable, pitting the self-doubt and moral descent of a tortured modern-day architect against the debauchery of ancient Rome.

Cast aside any concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence — “The Wild Robot” (Dreamworks) has arrived, a Mary Poppins bot ready to chase your cares away in this warm and fuzzy animated adaptation of the bestselling children’s book by Peter Brown.