In concept, Priest should be one cool film. A story of priests fighting vampires sounds all kinds of awesome. Similar to Scott Stewart‘s directorial debut, Legion, he takes a concept full of potential and makes it lifeless. Priest is a middle of the road spectacle. It’s nothing new, nothing exciting, and lacks any sense of fun or imagination.
It becomes quite apparent in the opening that Priest is going to be a lackluster experience. The opening introduces Priest (Paul Bettany) and a pack of his fellow priests entering a vampire hive to kill a mamma vamp. Priest discovers, in Admiral Ackbar fashion, that “it’s a trap!” He loses a few of his comrades, namely a priest played by Karl Urban, who later shows up as the pretty un-menacing and inept villain, “Black Hat.”
This opening scene features a hollow feeling, no suspense or laughs. It falls flat, like the rest of the film. After a rather cool expository animated sequence, Priest reverts right back to mediocrity. One starts to yearn for the whole film to be about that long war the opening showcases. It’s a rather questionable decision to hint at the coolest part of this world in the first two minutes, then go to a story that couldn’t be any less engaging.
The story is more or less a callback to The Searchers, except done in an Underworld or Resident Evil fashion. After years of peace and quiet from the herded vampires, an attack happens. Priest’s brother and his wife are killed, while his niece was kidnapped. A passive and annoying sheriff (played by Cam Gigandet) comes to Priest pleading for help, but the higher-ups of this post-apocalyptic-esque city deny Priest to leave the walls of the city. Christopher Plummer, who has virtually nothing to do, declares he’ll be banished from these walls forever if he goes.
Big surprise: he goes. With the “help” of the young sheriff, who is also the missing niece’s boyfriend, they set out on a real quick and small adventure together. Their journey consists of mostly looking overly serious, spelling out what’s happening, or the sheriff whining about how he’s going to keep Lucy, the niece, safe. Sounds exciting, right?
Tone is a major issue with Priest. All the actors obviously know what type of movie they’re in, but none of the characters are actually fun to be around or carry much depth to them. Bettany does what he can as Priest, as one would expect. Bettany is a fine actor who can spout plenty of terrible lines and get away with it. Bettany is simply stuck with a bad script, like the rest of the cast.
Scott Stewart is capable of framing a nice money shot, but he’s unable to inject any life into it. From the performance to the set-pieces, everything is stilted and simply goes through the motions. What could have been an impressive high-concept actioner is instead a dull and failed attempt at summer fun.