Psycho's Movie Reviews #204: PRIEST (2011)

Priest is a 2011 American action horror film directed by Scott Stewart and stars Paul Bettany as the title character. It is loosely based on the Korean comic of the same name by Hyung Min-woo. In an alternate universe, humanity and vampires have warred for centuries. After the last Vampire War, a veteran Warrior Priest lives in obscurity until his niece (Lily Collins) is kidnapped by vampires.

The film was released on May 13, 2011. The film earned over $78 million at the box office against a $60 million production budget, but it was panned by critics, who praised the film's visual style and art direction while criticizing the movie's use of genre clichés, writing, acting, editing and action scenes—although, some of its action scenes were praised.

Plot

A centuries-long war between humans and vampires has devastated the planet's surface and led to a theocracy under an organization called The Church. Despite the vampires' vulnerability to sunlight, and all of mankind's technological advances, the vampires' greater strength and speed made them impossible to defeat, until humanity sheltered in giant walled cities and trained a group of elite warriors, the Priests, which turned the tide.

In the opening scene, a group of Priests enters the Sola Mira Hive but are ambushed by the vampires. As they attempt to retreat, one of their number is seized from behind, and their leader tries to pull him to safety, but is forced to let go and watch him dragged, screaming, back into the hive.

Years later, the majority of the vampires have been killed, while the remainder were placed in reservations. With the war over, the Clergy disbanded the Priests. Outside the walled cities, some humans seek out a living, free from the totalitarian control of The Church.

Priest (Paul Bettany) is approached by Hicks (Cam Gigandet), the sheriff of a free town, Augustine. Priest learns that his brother, Owen, and Owen's wife, Shannon—Priest's girlfriend before he was recruited by the clergy—were mortally wounded in a vampire attack, and Priest's niece, Lucy (Lily Collins), was kidnapped. Hicks asks for Priest's help in rescuing Lucy. Priest asks the Church to reinstate his authority, but leader Monsignor Orelas (Christopher Plummer) does not believe the vampire story and refuses, insisting on maintaining the common belief that the vampires have been completely defeated, for fear of compromising the Church's authority. Priest defiantly leaves the city and Orelas sends three Priests and a Priestess (Maggie Q) to bring him back.

Priest and Hicks arrive at Nightshade Reservation where humans called Familiars, people infected with a pathogen that makes them subservient to the vampires, live alongside a number of the surviving vampires. After a fierce battle, the pair discovers that most of the vampires have taken shelter in Sola Mira, which was thought to have been abandoned after the war. Priestess, one of Priest's team during the failed attack on the Hive, joins them at Sola Mira. The trio destroys a Hive Guardian vampire, then discover that the vampires have bred a new army and dug a tunnel out of the mountain towards a town called Jericho. The other three Priests have arrived at Jericho just as night falls and an armoured train arrives, unleashing hundreds of vampires upon the population. The vampires are led by a powerful and mysterious human wearing a black hat (Karl Urban). When the three Priests reject Black Hat's offer to join him, he kills them all.

The next morning, Priest, Priestess and Hicks arrive in Jericho and discover the town empty and the three dead Priests crucified. Priest and Priestess share an intimate moment when she confesses her feelings for him, hoping that now that Shannon has died, he would no longer feel bound to her. Priest gently refuses. Priest realizes that the vampires have been using the trains to travel by day and attack the free towns by night, with the walled cities at the end of the train line. Hicks believes the cities are likewise protected by the sun, but Priest explains that the cities' massive clouds of smoke and ash have permanently deprived them of sunlight. If the train reaches one of the cities, the attack will be a slaughter.

Hicks, who is in love with Lucy, threatens Priest, believing that Priest intends to kill her if she has been infected by the vampires. Priestess explains that he cannot do so, because Lucy is actually Priest's daughter, and that Owen stepped in as a husband and a father when Priest was taken by the Church. Lucy was never told the truth about her parentage.

While Priestess rushes ahead to plant a bomb on the railroad tracks, Priest and Hicks board the train to rescue Lucy. Battling vampires and Familiars, the two are finally overpowered by Black Hat just as they find Lucy. Black Hat is revealed as the priest who was lost in the attack on Sola Mira. After being captured, the vampire Queen gave him her blood, turning him into the first Vampire-Human hybrid who can survive the sun. As Priest fights Black Hat, Lucy discovers the truth about her parentage. On the tracks ahead of the train, Priestess battles several Familiars, but one of them destroys the detonator for the explosives. Instead, she mounts the explosives on her motor bike and drives it into the train engine. The explosion and subsequent derailment kills the vampires and engulfs Black Hat in flames, while Hicks, Priest, Priestess, and Lucy are able to escape.

Priest returns to the city and confronts Monsignor Orelas during Mass, telling him of the burnt train containing the vampires' bodies, but not the Queen's. He proves this by throwing a vampire head onto the floor and shocking everyone in the room. Orelas still refuses to believe him, declaring that the war is over, while Priest says that it is just beginning. Outside the city Priest meets Priestess, who confirms that other Priests have been notified and will meet them at a rendezvous point. Priest sets off into the sunset.

Production

Priest is directed by Scott Stewart and written by Cory Goodman. The film is based on the supernatural horror and action Korean comics Priest by Min-Woo Hyung.

The project was first announced in March 2005 when the studio Screen Gems bought Goodman's spec script. In January 2006, Andrew Douglas, who directed The Amityville Horror, was attached to direct Priest. In June 2006, actor Gerard Butler entered negotiations to star as the title character, and filming was scheduled to start in Mexico on October 1, 2006. Filming did not proceed and, by three years later, director Douglas had been replaced by Stewart, while Butler had been replaced in the starring role by Paul Bettany. Stewart and Bettany had previously worked together in the Screen Gems film Legion.

With a budget of $60 million, filming began in August 2009 in Los Angeles, California, and it concluded in November 2009. The film was the most expensive production from Screen Gems, to that date, and as of 2018 is still tied for third-most expensive, behind only Underworld: Awakening and Resident Evil: Retribution.

Tokyopop flew Min-Woo Hyung to where production was taking place so the comics' creator could visit the art department and discuss the film with Stewart. The film diverges from the comics in following a different timeline of events and adding elements of the sci-fi western, cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic science-fiction genres. The director described Priest's vampires as not being human in origin, and humans bitten by vampires became familiars instead. There are different forms of vampires, such as hive drones, guardians, and a queen. Since the vampires were intended to move quickly, they were fully computer-generated for the film. While vampires are harmed by sunlight in most lore, the film's vampires are instead photosensitive, being albino cave-dwellers. Stewart said, "They are the enemy we don't really understand, but we fought them for centuries. They are mysterious and alien, with their own culture. You sense that they think and communicate, but you don't really understand what they are saying." The director also called Priest a homage to The Searchers with the title character being similar to John Wayne's character and the vampires being similar to the Comanche. The animated prologue for the film was created by American animator and director Genndy Tartakovsky.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Priest was released in the United States and Canada on May 13, 2011. The film's release date changed numerous times in 2010 and 2011. It was originally scheduled for October 1, 2010, but it moved earlier to August 27, 2010, to fill a weekend slot when another Screen Gems film, Resident Evil: Afterlife, was postponed. When the filmmakers wanted to convert Priest from 2D to 3D, the film was newly scheduled for release on January 14, 2011. It was delayed again to May 13, 2011, so the film could attract summertime audiences. Priest was released outside the United States and Canada on May 6, 2011, in four markets. It grossed an estimated $5.6 million over the weekend, with "decent debuts" of $2.9 million in Russia and $1.8 million in Spain. It performed poorly in the United Kingdom with under $700,000. The film was released in the United States and Canada on May 13, 2011, in 2,864 theatres with 2,006 having 3D screenings. It grossed an estimated $14.5 million over the weekend, ranking fourth at the box office. Its performance was considered subpar compared to similar films in the Underworld series and Resident Evil series. To date, Priest has grossed an estimated $76.5 million, of which $29.1 million was from North America.

Priest was largely panned by critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 15% based on reviews from 101 critics and reports a rating average of 4.00 out of 10 with a consensus that "Priest is admittedly sleek and stylish, but those qualities are wasted on a dull, derivative blend of sci-fi, action, and horror clichés". At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 41 based on 13 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade audiences gave the film was a "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Budget $60 million

Box office $78.3 million

{The vampire's remind me of the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth}

My Review

Legion director Scott Charles Steward and actor Paul Bettany have teamed up for sloppy seconds in the supernatural, horror, fantasy, action chiller Priest, with Karl Urban, Christopher Plummer, Maggie Q, and Brad Dourif. This grim but ambitious $60 million cinematic adaptation of Korean author Min-Woo Hyung's graphic novel shares comparatively little in common with its multi-storied source material. The novel took place in three settings: modern times, the Crusades, and the Wild West. Meanwhile, Steward's film confines itself to modern times. Nowhere in Hyung's graphic novel do vampires lurk so this Screen Gems' release departs radically with its choice of supernatural creatures. Interestingly, the graphic novel boasted zombies rather than vampires. What Priest does share is the off-beat and unusual mingling of the Western with supernatural horror and dark fantasy themes.

Priest concerns a daring mission to rescue an innocent damsel-in-distress that bloodthirsty vampires have abducted. This far-fetched but interesting actioneer occurs in an alternate universe where mankind and vampires have been killing each other for centuries. The premise that Steward and freshman scribe Cory Goodman conjure up seems contradictory. This anonymous replica of Earth spawned vampires and the vampires proved so formidable an adversary that they defied flame-throwers, field artillery, and automatic weapons. Basically, these primeval creatures routed the best that modern science could create to combat them. Mankind teetered on the brink of annihilation until the Church deployed the warrior monks. Although it doesn't dominate the elaborately-knit narrative, the heroes are comparable to martial arts warriors imbued with a religious ideology. Specifically, Steward has compared them to the Jedi Knights of the Star Wars franchise. The primary drawback to Priest is that Scott and Goodman never adequate develop the subhuman vampires. They merely provide a glimpse and rely entirely on dynamic CGI to make them look intimidating as opponents.

The "Priest" protagonist (Paul Bettany of Legion) belongs to an elite cadre of warrior priests. These men and women wear cassocks like medieval monks. They have a cross tattooed across their forehead and down their nose. The Catholic Church commissioned them to destroy the vampires after all conventional military industrial methods failed. Miraculously, they saved society. As soon as hostilities concluded, however, the Church cast them out because they were no longer required. These vampires aren't a romantic breed like the Twilight fangsters. Instead, they are a pasty-faced bunch of blind creatures, reminiscent those monsters in Descent, that leap and lunge. Indeed, these mutants can tear a man in half. Often, Steward springs these vampires out of nowhere for maximum fright effect. Some stand upright, but they all shun evening apparel. However, they don't turn men into vampires. The only one capable of this is the Queen Vampire; she is a creature, too. The vampires remain mankind's mortal enemy and sunlight is mankind's best weapon.

The humans in Priest reside in dystopian cities enclosed in towering walls like a medieval castle. The cities inside resemble those in the seminal sci-fi thriller Blade Runner, while the lands beyond the city look like something out of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti western. When the story unfolds, the vampires are all believed dead, and the autocratic Monsignor Orelas (Christopher Plummer of Dracula 2000) has disbanded the priest units for fear they might turn against them. The Catholic Church rules this amoral world and maintains that all vampires have been destroyed. Our eponymous hero suspects this may not be entirely true and discovers first-hand not all the vampires were killed. He is haunted by an episode from the war when he lost a comrade (Karl Urban of Red) during an attack on a vampire hive. After getting dismissed by Monsignor Orelas about his memory, our hero learns that his brother's 18-year old daughter, Lucy (Lily Collins of The Blind Side), has been kidnapped. Vampires raided her house and slaughtered her parents. This scene evokes the vintage John Ford western "The Searchers." Monsignor Orelas refuses to endorse our hero's mission because it would make the Church appear flawed. Orelas sends out four priests to arrest the protagonist. A local lawman (Cam Gigandet of Easy A) accompanies the Priest on the search because he loves Lily. Meanwhile, three priests who served with our hero are killed by a mysterious vampire who calls himself 'Black Hat.'

Altogether, Priest qualifies as an entertaining pastiche of far better films. In an interview, Steward acknowledged his debt to the classic western The Searchers. For the most part, Steward does a splendid job of recycling sure-fire elements from those films. Comparisons between Priest and the Underworld franchise are inevitable. The movie poster has Paul Bettany perched high up on a ledge just as Kate Beckinsale was in Underworld. These two heroes are warriors who have taken a vow to destroy their enemies. Despite its obvious dearth of originality, this polished supernatural horror epic looks terrific. Forrest Gump lenser Don Burgess makes Priest appear like a cross-between of a Spaghetti western and the Mad Max movies. Burgess maximizes the grit in the rugged, dusty, and dirty 'wastelands' scenes, while he delivers a film noir like look to the cityscapes. Priest has all the trappings of an art-house epic. The use of 3-D adds little to the action, particularly since Priest had been converted to 3-D rather than lensed in the process. The settings are pretty creepy, especially the portal toilet like confessionals that armed guards patrol. The CGI-vampires make an intimidating adversary because they strike so swiftly without quarter. Happily, the cast maintains a straight-face in spite of these incredible, larger-than-life shenanigans. The producers were undoubtedly hoping to milk the material for a sequel since the ending leaves things wide open for something else. No, Priest isn't as good as the earlier Steward & Bettany campy opus "Legion." Nothing that happens in the above-average "Priest" can top the gnarly old lady crawling on the ceiling like a human fly.

In all honesty while the film looked kind of interesting I was from reading reviews that it was a waste of time(not just on IMDb). So I watched Priest expecting little, but while it had a fair amount of problems with it I found it decent. Is it the best of year? No. The worst? Nowhere near for me. Priest in my mind is somewhere near the lower-middle of the spectrum.

Where Priest scores especially is in the costume and set design which look wonderful, and the photography and editing looks very slick and the lighting atmospheric. The soundtrack is excellent too, with a rather epic feel to it sometimes. I enjoyed the performances of Paul Bettany and Cam Gigandet, was intrigued somewhat by the characters, even if they are a little vacuous and found the direction decent.

What wasn't so good was primarily the length, I personally think Priest was on the too-short side. Had the film been longer, the script could have been less choppy and underdeveloped and the story-though it did have an interesting concept to work from- less rushed and simplistic. Mostly I was impressed with the stylish look of the film, but I did occasionally find the effects on the artificial side.

{This movie as a whole just reminded me of Tokyo Ghoul}

Overall, underdeveloped and rather rushed, but the film's look especially saves it. 7/10