Sometimes your first instinct is bang on the money. Based on a Korean comic book I’ve never read which was in turn based on a video game I’ve never heard of, the prospects for 2011’s Priest weren’t exactly sky high. Even the fact that it was a further attempt by Paul Bettany to be taken seriously as an action hero, or that it was being helmed by Scott Stewart, the man who gave us the amusingly barmy angel actioner, Legion, didn’t give me all that much hope.
Essentially another exaggerated fantasy/action/sci-fi/horror that hoped to turn tropes on their heads and deliver another gloomy, Blade Runner-style glimpse of a dystopian future, Priest seems primarily made to ensnare that rarest of audiences, goths who like Westerns. However, despite utterly despising every second of its eighty-seven minute running time back during its original release, has time been even remotely kinder to one of the most forgettable fantasies released during the 2010s?
To put things bluntly, it’s the future and it’s shit. A centuries long war between humans and vampires have led to a time where people all live in walled cities for protection under a theocracy ruled by a body called “The Church” until their elite soldiers (helpfully named Priests) managed to turn the tide. However, in the aftermath, any surviving vampires and their familiars were placed in reservations while the Priests themselves were disbanded and struggled to maintain normal lives after the war.
As we delve into this world, we meet one particular Priest (unhelpfully named Priest), who discovers from Hicks, the sheriff of a town located outside the totalitarian control of the cities, that his estranged brother’s farm has been decimated by a vampire attack. With his brother eventually succumbing to his wounds and his wife killed outright, Priest realises that their daughter, Lucy, is unaccounted for and must have been carried away by some bestial bloodsuckers. Denied permission to leave the city and search for his niece, Priest commits the blasphemy of leaving anyway and teams up with Hicks to try and pick up a trail the vampires might have left behind. However, it soon becomes apparent that Lucy’s abduction was no mere coincidence and the creature responsible is a man known only as Black Hat who seems to have the powers of a vampire, but none of the weaknesses. Even worse is the fact that this “human vampire” has a past with Priest when we discover that he was once a Priest himself and as he travels in a bullet train tricked out to shield his vampires brothers from daylight, he’s ultimately going to target the pollution enshouded human cities.
As Priest gets some much needed assistance from another former Priest sent out to bring him in, the balance of humanity hangs in the balance as delicately as our fracturing attention span…
Anyone who knows their Westerns will no doubt raise a quizzical eyebrow at parts of the plot as it sound suspiciously familiar to John Ford’s The Searchers if you reskinned it with a gothic, Underworld sort of vibe. But while you can’t argue with how much time, imagination and effort went into creating the world that Priest operates in, like a lot of movie of this ilk, virtually none of the same amount of vigour was spent on the plot or charactization. For a start, Bettany plays the second steely eyed, tattooed, monosyllabic type of fantasy action hero he already portrayed in the vastly more entertaining Legion, but aside from fixing everyone with that patented piercing stare and fixing a stoic look permanently on his face, there’s nothing for him to do aside from throw himself into some taxing fight sequences and patiently wait while the makeup guys put that crucifix tattoo on his face every morning.
Quite why director Scott Stewart kept insisting on offering Bettany roles that required virtually no personality whatsoever, I’ll never know, but I’m guessing that both of them were so fond of all the world building, they thought it would compensate. However, as impressively gloomy as this world is that mixes together western tropes and vampire shtick, it often doesn’t make a lot of sense. While the film trades heavily in giving the dense cityscapes of Blade Runner a religious face-lift, not only does it feel oddly derivative, but I’m not sure what any of it is supposed to mean – is this film trying to say something about the controlling forces of religion? Is it suggesting that a life entirely governed by the church results in inevitable corruption? Or does Stewart just think that weapons crafted from religious iconography fucking rocks? I’m not saying that the world of Priest has to broach these big issues, but it seems weird that the filmmakers would go through all this trouble just to end up at dystopia = bad.
Maybe if the action in Priest was of a higher quality, the rest of the film wouldn’t feel so flat, but while the Priests show of their ill-defined abilities (sometimes they can leap like John Carter, sometimes they can’t) against some hazy CGI monsters, you just can’t stop your eyes from glazing over. It’s also something of a questionable feat that the film manages to waste virtually every single member of the cast, from Bettany’s bland hero, to Maggie Q’s dutiful Priestess, to Christopher Plummer’s dogma spouting dictator. The always good value for money Brad Dourif pops up for a scene or two, Cam Gigandet just looks bored and I’m struggling to remember if Lily Collins has any lines whatsoever that aren’t screamed with fear. However, the only one who escapes with their dignity – barely – is Karl Urban who obviously is getting a massive kick out of playing a villainous outlaw with fangs. Waving his arms like a conductor while a whole town is ripped apart or just looking fucking cool in a duster, he manages to coast on evil vibes despite literally having no story to sink his teeth into.
So are there any good points? Well, not to sound like an extremely easy-to-please pre-teen, but those bikes the Priests ride are fucking sweet and I have to say that the years have mellowed my outright hatred of the film down to partially interested boredom. However, if you really feel like you have to consume more examples of sci-fi/western/ horror mash ups, I don’t know why you wouldn’t have just skipped the middle man and gone straight for the Vampire Hunter D movies. I mean, why watch a film trying and failing to hit that animated aesthetic, when you can just watch anime and get it right the first time.
Dull and utterly forgettable, Priest elects not to follow in the gonzo mindset that made Legion so endearingly strange and instead worldbuilds by stealing the most recognisable parts from better movies. Bettany would eventually nail that weirdo action character he’d obviously been shopping around for once he signed on to play Vision in the MCU, but when it came to Priest, both he and the entire production just didn’t have a prayer.
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