Review | Priest

I love a good vampire flick as much as the next person but we seem to be perilously close to running out of things to say about these seductive ghouls. In a desperate bid for originality through flagrant borrowing, Priest re-imagines the monsters as a primal force in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world. And by the time the film rolls to a feeble halt you’ll almost miss the kind of vampires that sparkle.

In this alternative reality man and vampire have been locked in combat throughout the ages, ravaging each other and the earth itself. As the superior species, vampires had the upper had until humanity locks itself away in walled cities ruled by the church and protected by a secret weapon; the priests.

Trained to eviscerate vampires at an alarming rate, these murdering whirlwinds of the cloth push back the vampire threat until they are resigned to protective reservations in a vast wasteland. With the bloodsuckers out of commission the authoritarian church has no further need of the ninja clergy and sentences them to an awkward reintegration into dystopian society.

Which is all well and good, in that repressed sort of way the church likes, until the family of an unnamed priest is murdered by a roving band of vampires in their wasteland outpost home. The powers that be want to keep their heads in the sand so the renegade padre ditches his sworn duty, hops on his rocket-bike and cruises into the desert to mete out god’s holy justice.

Along for the ride is a remarkably forgettable lawman and a fellow priestess who, despite vowing thou shalt keep it in thy pants, is rather smitten by the priest with no name. Little does the trio realise that the gang of marauders they are hunting is lead by an old friend who has been turned into a powerful human-vampire – or hampire.

The premise itself has a buoyant, pulpy energy that could have made for some good, dumb fun if only it had taken itself a little less seriously. The Orwellian metropolis, more than a little reminiscent of Blade Runner, is the film’s most intriguing setting but unfortunately we only spend about 10 minutes there. Instead the bulk of the action takes place in a barren wasteland with as little personality as the cast.

A stoic Paul Bettany takes the lead, he’s physical enough but has nothing much to do except kill vampires and sternly chastise those who don’t kill vampires quite as well as him. His semi-bumbling sidekick with the on-the-nose name of Hicks is played by Cam Gigandet, who you might have instantly forgotten as the villain from every teen movie ever made. Maggie Q takes up the awkward role of love interest to a thoroughly disinterested lead and Karl Urban plays the villain with that deft subtlety only a trained Shortland Street veteran can muster.

Confused, sloppy and unforgivably dull in parts, the film suffers from a severe identity crisis. A better filmmaker could have made about three decent films out of the hodge-podge of half-baked ideas lazily string together here – at the risk of ruining the ending (spoiler; there’s an explosion) it’s all a bit of an ungodly train wreck.

Priest is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.