I was somehow completely oblivious to the existence of 2011’s Priest, a big-budget action/vampire (note how I didn’t use the word “horror”) movie. It is unlikely I failed to miss all advertising for it at the time of its release, and yet I have zero recollection of it.
Courtesy of a budget twofer bluray release (where it is paired with Legion in a “Double Salvation” pack), I have now seen this film and it left me with some lingering questions. Just some minor, niggling details like:
In lieu of showing us material that would be visually interesting, why instead animate an extended prologue tackling the history of human conflict against the vampire hordes, reframing every conflict from the crusades to WWI to be humans versus vampires? Why is Madchen Amick in the film for all of only about five minutes, even if it is just to be the hot mom of the girl-to-be-in-peril? What exactly was so amazing about the squad of kung-fu fighting priests that they succeeded in taming the vampire menace when all else failed? If they were so successful, why did the church disband them? If the overwhelming majority of people live in walled cities, why does the church disavow the existing of vampires, especially when they don’t seem to substitute a different threat as justification for these fortresses? Why does everything in this movie look it was stolen from other films, especially the cities that are about ¾ Blade Runner and ¼ Brazil? Why is there always black ash in the air, and dark clouds overhead, in the city when it becomes sun-lit desert as soon as you exit the city gates? Why were the vampires put on reservations, as they appear to be monsters hell-bent on destroying humanity and, besides, the church says they don’t exist anyway? If the leaders think Paul Bettany’s priest is a threat, then why don’t they just kill him, let alone freely let him leave the city on a jet-powered motorcycle? What is the purpose of a super-low-slung, jet-propelled motorcycle anyway, except to make sure the slightest bump in the desert wasteland turns you into a mile-long red streak? Why do people live in the wastelands anyway? With a lot of modern technology around, why is the only photo of one such family a sepia-toned thing out of the 19th century, including their clothing? Why does another family have a working Victrola and at least one playable 78 rpm record, when those would be extremely unlikely to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? Why do the priests have a tattoo of a cross on their foreheads, with the base extending down the bridge of the nose, when they should know how hard it is to get a good job when you have a face tat? Why do our heroes have the ability to jump impossibly high and survive great falls, when it appears they are only human? What good would it do, even when fighting vampires, to cut a cross into the bullet, especially since Bettany tells us bullets don’t do anything against them? What is the point of throwing stars that are actually crosses, and isn’t that kind of blasphemous? How about the crucifix Bettany always carries, which looks a bit like a closed pair of streampunk garden shears and which has a dagger concealed inside? Why do priests in movies like this always have to read aloud from the Bible some of the most famous passages in it, when they damn well should have those memorized by now? How is it every single line of eye-rollingly ponderous dialogue seems to be stolen from another picture, when most of those lines weren’t as bad in the source material? Why can’t anybody give a straight answer to even the simplest question, instead of replying in faux-intellectual riddles? Why do the laws of physics not apply in the world of the movie in any way whatsoever, allowing things like a thrown knife to bisect an airborne bullet? What about the scene where Maggie Q throws large stones into the air, upon which Bettany bounds from one to another like he’s climbing a magical staircase? What is the origin and evolution of the vampires, that they are eyeless things with huge fangs looking like discarded first-draft CGI attempts of the most incidental creatures from the Resident Evil series? Why was Karl Urban turned into a human/vampire hybrid by the vampire queen? Why did they wait so long to do this, and why haven’t they made any more of them since? What is the deal with the vampires’ “familiars”, who seem to be human yet have glowing eyes? Why does Urban and his crew travel around on a train? Don’t they know trains can’t exactly travel wherever they want and whenever? How does this train sneak into railway stations? Are there no other trains in this world and, if so, why are there still station masters? Why does Screen Gems specialize almost exclusively in garbage movies like this that, if not actually adaptations of video games, might as well be?
And yet, I haven’t asked the most important questions. Ones like: why did I watch Priest when it was almost guaranteed to be crap? Why did I then do this huge and annoying write-up on it? Who are you and why are you reading this?
Dir: Scott Stewart
Starring Paul Bettany, the improbably named Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q
Watched on blu-ray