"Priest" Review
Priest is in essence, mediocrity. But its the type of mediocrity that tries to trick the mind of the viewer. While the CGI and the action is good, the acting is average, the story is alright and the plot twist leaves you saying “meh.” What it creates with average, it tries to make up for with action, but there's so many ways it could have been better. All in all, Priest is plain rice, its not good, its not bad, and you take nothing away from it.
Now before I begin its back story time, Priest is based off the the Korean comic by the same name and is directed by Scott Stewart, whose resume includes 2009's “action packed, religious thrill-ride” Legion (seriously does anyone even remember that movie?) The film opens to a group of priests deep inside the vampire nest of Mira Sola, when their leader Unnamed Priest #1 (Paul Bettany) realizes its a trap. Soon only Bettany and Unnamed Priest #2 (Karl Urban) are left and nearly to the exit when Urban is grabbed from behind and dragged into the darkness. Soon after this, Bettany wakes up from his nightmare/flashback and cut to random farm house. Here we meet two characters that are obviously going to live past the next ten minutes Shannon and Owen Pace. After a small fight with their teenage daughter Lucy about being able to go to the city and sitting down to dinner, the house begins to shake. Running to the window Owen sees hundreds of “vampires” (I'll get to them in a minute) charging towards the homestead. The couple quickly hide Lucy in the cellar and close the doors as we see Shannon tell Lucy not to scream and quickly hear both Shannon and Owen be ripped apart. After all quiets down we see light fall on Lucy's face as a figure's shadow slowly comes into frame. And cut to a dark city protected by the church, where the church seems to resemble, and its pretty well forced down the viewers throat, Big Brother from 1984. As we follow Priest through his confession, he is contacted by Hicks (Cam Gigandet), the sheriff of a nearby town, to help find Lucy who was kidnapped by vampires two nights ago. And thus our heroes set out on their journey.
All in all, the story of Priest isn't too bad. It has its moments where it shines but more often than not you're left wanting more. The action scenes aren't anything spectacular, there's a few good scenes, but like I said before, this is a movie of mediocrity. Next up is the acting: it ranges from decent in Bettany's case, kind of like Vin Diesel when he plays Riddick. I make this comparison because Bettany, like Diesel, seems to have trouble showing emotion and rather just growls at the screen, but as he's supposed to play a character devoid of emotion, it works for the movie. Then you have Gigandet's acting which ranges from bad to “you're excited when his character almost dies.” The character of Hicks is just annoying and this is not helped by Gigandet's acting which is some of the most unconvincing I've seen in a while. One thing Priest does get right is its atmosphere. For the majority of the movie you do get the sense that this really is a world devoid of life, struggling in the fashion of the old west. However, when the movie needs to feel creepy, it more than excels. The scenes inside the vampire hive of Mira Sola easily puts the viewer on edge with its dark surroundings and creepy soundtrack. Now the reason most people would come to see this movie, the vampires. These aren't really vampires in the traditional sense, they're more like the “lickers” from the Resident Evil videogames and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. They're large, eyeless behemoths that apparently have traded eyesight for agility (not that we ever get to see them use it, so we have to take the movie's word for it.) You could have named these monsters anything and not have had to change the story, they are not anything close to vampires (but at least they don't sparkle.)
Priest isn't the best movie to waste your $11.50 on, but its definitely worth a look when it comes to Netflix and Redbox. Its one of those films that isn't good, but its not bad, which can work against it because it doesn't even have a chance to be “so bad its good.”
Final Verdict: 3 out of 5
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