Priest (Movie Review)

Okay, first things first. I knew about this film before going in. Second thing next, not a single penny of my hard-earned income went to the makers of this travesty.

For those who may not know, this is a [yawn] vampire flick. The protagonist is a Catholic priest who wields knives, guns, and razor-sharp disk thingies, each a cross between a … uh … cross and a Chinese throwing star. He knows Hollywood jujitsu, which enables him to defy gravity, to be impervious to inertia and wind resistance, and to shrug off falls that would break leg and arm bones of lesser, non-Hollywood mortals like you and I.

My buddy rented Priest from Netflix. When I told the wife I was going to see it with him, she gasped, aware of my sensitivities toward any blasphemy of the faith of my youth, the faith that truly, deeply sustains me through hard times now. But I laughed it off. I looked toward the evening as a combination of getting outta the house to hang with a pal and watch some real bad cheese.

It was real, bad cheese.

I won’t go into the plot. I’ve seen it before, in different movies. The set-up was ho-hum, riddled with clichés. The scares were of the superloud interruptory kind. In other words, cheap and easy, more “jolts” than “scares.” The bad guy was extremely disappointing and overwhelmingly underwhelming. Just a typical Hollywood bad guy. Note: a big black coat does not a bad guy make. Just sayin’.

To be diplomatic, there were a couple of things I liked. And by couple, I mean “two.” First, the backgrounds struck me for some reason. The cities were Blade Runner-esque, the deserts gray-washed. I liked the hundred-foot stone sculpture-towers and the giant crevasses left over from some unimaginable apocalypse. Second, the movie was short, mercifully short. An even eighty minutes, if you could believe the time on my buddy’s DVD player.

As for blasphemy, well, it’s there if you look for it. A message repeated at least five or six times (by characters and background voices) is: “If you disobey the Church, you disobey God.” Or something like that; blessedly my memory of the dialogue is fading fast. The Confessional is rendered a mind-control device you might find in North Korea. “Monsignors” are black-robed judgmentally eeeeevil figures. There is a preponderance of Catholic symbols throughout the film, but absolutely no Grace.

The vampires [yawn] are exceptionally disgusting in slimy ways. Not good slimy, like, say, Aliens, just repulsive slimy, like seeing two slugs doin’ it in your garden. And these vampires move blurringly fast like the Tasmanian Devil from old Bugs Bunny cartoons. [yawn]

Now, I know I’m not the target audience for this piece of crap. I’m about three decades beyond it. But I do enjoy a good SF flick as well as a good horror flick, and I could have appreciated Priest if it was just done with any degree of competence.

For example, since the flick is set in an alternative reality, why the digs at Christianity? Why not create a completely original man-made creed to fight the vampires? Frank Herbert of Dune fame would have done so and indeed did do similar things. Any why vampires? The producers obviously selected them for the current hipness factor, but these bloodsuckers are more Aliens than Twilight. Make the vampires some new breed of monster. Rethink the premise of the film, and you’d have a better film.

I give it a D-minus. Would’ve flunked it, but I had a good time hanging out with my friend.